Caroline Laurent’s debut novel, Et soudain, la liberté (2017), written in collaboration with Evelyne Pisier, fictionalises the life of the latter, a feminist thinker with a soft spot for tough guys. The plot drags a bit until the Pisier character, called Lucie, experiences a coup de foudre in Cuba: ‘Fidel Castro held her in his arms. Her hero, a god, revered by a generation. She shut her eyes and surrendered herself to him.’

Laurent’s first solo effort, An Impossible Return, is based on real-life experiences of a different kind. Some fifty years ago, the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago were dispossessed as a result of a deal between the British and Mauritian authorities on the eve of Mauritius’s independence. Onto this