On August 13, 2016, I visited The Beau Bassin Jewish Detainees Memorial and Information Centre in Mauritius for the first time. Standing in front of the rows of even, grey gravestones at the Jewish section of Saint-Martin Cemetery, I asked a museum guide if there was a tombstone that marked the death of a little Jewish boy named David. She laughed indulgently and explained that the David in question, from Natacha Appanah’s 2007 novel Le Dernier Frère, is a fictional character. Appanah’s text is so rich, she went on, that one has the impression that David will actually be at the cemetery, which is why I was not the first person to ask her that question. Of course, Appanah borrowed from reality, the guide conceded, raising the question of where the lines between reality and fiction, history and literature, begin and end. Appanah participates in a growing conversation with other writers from Mauritius with regard to national memory and history. Srilata Ravi explains: “Since the 1990s Mauritius has seen the emergence of a new generation of writers who questions the validity of the nationalist narrative of multiculturalism and seek to ‘re-image’ Mauritian society” (Ravi 29). By retelling histories of colonial Mauritius within the realm of fiction, Appanah destabilizes conceptions of competitive memory through the creation of dialogues among different groups of people, an important and significant gesture in the multilingual, multicultural nation-state of Mauritius. In Le Dernier Frère, Appanah brings together two unexpected groups in conversation to consider questions of traumatic experience and memory. In the novel, the protagonist Raj remembers his childhood friend, David Stein, brought to Mauritius with other Central European Jews during World War II by the British Colonial Office. The 1,581 Jews were detained in an old colonial prison in Beau Bassin, where Raj meets David after being

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Natacha Appanah 的 Le Dernier Frère 中的大屠杀、记忆和种族

2016 年 8 月 13 日，我第一次参观了毛里求斯的 Beau Bassin 犹太被拘留者纪念和信息中心。站在圣马丁公墓犹太区的一排排平坦的灰色墓碑前，我问博物馆导游是否有一块墓碑，标志着一个名叫大卫的犹太小男孩的死亡。她放纵地笑了笑，并解释说，娜塔莎·阿帕纳 (Natacha Appanah) 2007 年的小说《勒德尼尔·弗雷尔》(Le Dernier Frère) 中的大卫是虚构人物。Appanah 的文字非常丰富，她继续说，给人的印象是大卫实际上会在墓地，这就是为什么我不是第一个问她这个问题的人。当然，阿帕纳借鉴了现实，该指南承认，提出了现实与虚构、历史与文学之间的界限在哪里开始和结束的问题。阿帕纳与毛里求斯的其他作家就民族记忆和历史展开了越来越多的对话。Srilata Ravi 解释说：“自 1990 年代以来，毛里求斯出现了新一代作家，他们质疑多元文化主义的民族主义叙事的有效性，并寻求‘重新塑造’毛里求斯社会”（Ravi 29）。通过在小说领域复述毛里求斯殖民地的历史，阿帕纳通过在不同人群之间创造对话来破坏竞争记忆的概念，这是毛里求斯多语言、多文化民族国家的一个重要而重要的姿态。在 Le Dernier Frère，阿帕纳将两个意想不到的群体聚集在一起进行对话，以思考创伤经历和记忆的问题。在小说中，主角 Raj 记得他的儿时玩伴 David Stein 在二战期间被英国殖民办公室和其他中欧犹太人带到毛里求斯。1,581 名犹太人被关押在 Beau Bassin 的一座旧殖民监狱中，拉吉在那里遇到了大卫。