Lakshmi’s Secret Diary

Lakshmi’s Secret Diary is a remarkable Indian Francophone novel set in Pondicherry, the former capital of French India, that tells the story of Lakshmi the temple elephant’s attempt to escape her fate.

Ari Gautier is an Indian Francophone writer and poet from the former French Indian territory of Pondicherry, now based in Norway. One of the few contemporary Indian writers who adopts French as a primary literary language, he is also the author of the novel Le Thinnai and the short story collection Nocturne Pondichéry.

Sheela Mahadevan is lecturer in French and Francophone studies at the University of Liverpool.

Matt Reeck, translator of “Muslim”: A Novel:
Translating a text as subtly complex as Ari Gautier’s Lakshmi’s Secret Diary with the litheness of Sheela Mahadevan’s English is a considerable accomplishment. In her translation, Gautier’s Pondichéry is rich with unforgettable characters, history, and wisdom.

Geetanjali Shree, International Booker Prize-winning author of Tomb of Sand:
Fusing history, memory, mythology, and the immediate present, Lakshmi’s Secret Diary is Ari Gautier’s gift to a lost humankind. Meditative and melancholy, whimsical and funny, it breaks free of its location in colonial Pondicherry to meditate on the human condition, on fate and freedom and choice. It lingers long after you’ve read it.

Ananda Devi, author of The Living Days:
This is a tale that goes back through the ages, but that reaches out to us, now, as we subjugate nature to our own ends. Filled with humour, it is nonetheless heart-breaking.

Maryse Condé, author of Segu and I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem:
What a magnificent and original novel, introducing the reader to a dreamlike world where the nature of India plays a major role.