Three books that put you in Madagascar. Two are by writers from Madagascar and set there: Beyond the Rice Fields and Return to the Enchanted Island. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
Malagasy literature grew out of spoken art, including kabary, formal public oratory, and hainteny, allusive poetry. Writers today use Malagasy and French, and the oral epic Ibonia shows how much began as performance. Few Malagasy books have been translated, so English readers meet the island through a small shelf of titles.
Naivo's Beyond the Rice Fields, translated from French, is set in nineteenth-century Imerina and follows an enslaved boy and his master's daughter through the persecutions of Queen Ranavalona's reign. Johary Ravaloson's Return to the Enchanted Island sends a man back to Antananarivo and his family's ancestral land, where taboos and kinship duties press on him. Alison Jolly's Lords and Lemurs is a primatologist's memoir of decades of fieldwork, weaving lemurs, Malagasy history and southern communities together. Gerald Durrell's The Aye-Aye and I recounts his expedition to collect aye-ayes.
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Set in nineteenth-century Imerina, it follows an enslaved boy and his master's daughter through the persecutions of Queen Ranavalona's reign.
A man returns to Antananarivo and his family's ancestral land, meeting Malagasy taboos, kinship duties, class tensions and the pull of tradition.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Madagascar.
A primatologist's memoir of decades of fieldwork, weaving lemurs, Malagasy history, kings and southern communities into one portrait.
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