Forbidden love! Murder for profit! Gorgeous landscapes! Shipwrecks! Passion! War! Woodworking! Nursing! Witchcraft! If this sounds like your cup of tea, then A.R. Tirant’s historical romance — Echoes from the Oasis — might be the book for you. Tirant lived in the Seychelles for the first 37 years of her life, before migrating to the UK. In her book, she draws a rich picture of her childhood home, the island of Mahé, with her story of a nature-loving nurse, Anna, who falls in love with a wealthy merchant’s son, Louis, on the eve of World War I.
Tirant’s deep love for the natural beauty of her home shines through. This is her first novel, and the prose isn’t elegant, but she gets the job done. Occasionally I wished for more context: When a white man is sentenced to death for the murder of a black man, the narrator notes that “it was not every day that a white man would hang for the murder of a black man on the island.” I wanted to understand more of those dynamics. And sometimes I wished for more character development: one character advocates for a return to slavery with little context, and Anna’s mother reacts violently to a choice made by her daughter towards the end of the book with little precedent.
But those points aside, the book ends on a cliffhanger and I’ll admit that Tirant left me longing to know how things turn out. (The next book in the series is not yet out.)
This is book #33 in my effort to read a book by an author from every African country in 2019.
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