The daring fictions of bilingual Lindsey Collen

South African-born Lindsey Collen, based for most of her writing years on the Indian Ocean Republic of Mauritius, has been propelled to fame in the postcolonial English-language sphere for twice having gained the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region. Best known for her first winner, the breakthrough novel The Rape of Sita (1993, 1995, 2001), she has nevertheless also published several other works, notably in the local Kreol language. She is hailed there as an activist publicising advanced causes through the medium of her innovative short and long fictions, as this summary demonstrates afresh.
Late in the 1980s an aspirant woman writer picked from the rotating stand in a second-hand bookshop an old paperback with a lurid cover and vaguely familiar title--or at least [...]