Photographed by Khatleen Minerve.
Ariel Saramandi is a British-Mauritian writer, who lives – and was brought up – in Mauritius.
Her non-fiction has been published in Granta, The White Review, PEN Transmissions, the LA Review of Books and other places. Her fiction has most recently been published in the Brooklyn Rail. Her translation of Gilbert Ahnee’s Exils was published in The White Review’s Translation Anthology in 2024.
She has reported on Mauritius for the likes of the BBC and NBC. She is an alumni of the Tin House Winter Workshop 2023 and the Stinging Fly Summer School 2023. She was awarded a grant by the Society of Authors in 2024 for her essay collection.
She is a member of the MMM’s Commission de Développement Durable.
Short Stories
Eau de Toilette, Brooklyn Rail, 2020
Essays
Getting Rid of It, The White Review, 2022
The Inheritors, The White Review, 2022
All my languages, PEN Transmissions, 2022
Death takes the Lagoon, Granta, 2021 (one of Longreads’ five best reported essays of 2021).
An Education, Granta, 2020 (one of Granta’s 10 most popular essays of 2020)
Une Petite Grippe, LA Review of Books, 2020
“There is too much feminism”: On the rise of the Mauritian Alt-Right, LA Review of Books, 2019
The Aesthetics of the Dictator, Lit Hub, 2018
Bann-La, Boulevard Magazine Issue #100, 2018
A Novel about sleeping through the 90s, designed to wake you up in 2018, Electric Literature, 2018
We need to talk about Derek Walcott's sexual harassment scandal, Electric Literature, 2018
Thomas Pynchon shows us how white writers can avoid appropriation, Electric Literature, 2017
How 'The Remains of the Day' helped me understand Brexit and Trump, Electric Literature, 2017
Exils, Gilbert Ahnee, in The White Review Translation Anthology, 2024
Translation
Journalism
Mauritius insists Covid is under control. Hospitals tell a different story, African Arguments, 2021
Mauritius’ slow slide into authoritarianism, Rest Of World, 2021
2021: I was interviewed by the BBC Radio’s Newsday programme on Mauritius’ proposed social media law. You can listen to me here.
2020: I covered the Wakashio disaster for NBC News, and have appeared on BBC World News and the BBC Radio Service to talk about the crisis. With Khalil Cassimally, I run the Mauritius Oil Spill newsletter.
Interviews, Book Reviews and Literary Criticism
12 Mauritian women writers you should be reading, Electric Lit, 2022
A Year in Reading, The Millions, 2021
Homemaking: On Olivia Sudjic’s Asylum Road, LA Review of Books, 2021
Acts of Memory, Acts of Power: On Shenaz Patel’s “Silence of the Chagos”, LA Review of Books, 2019
Telling truths with new words: Jeffrey Zuckerman on translating Mauritian Literature, Words Without Borders, 2019
Ananda Devi is making sure Mauritius gets its due, Electric Literature, 2019
I reviewed books every month for Platypus Press's Weekend Review from 2017-2018. You can find them here.
Olga Tokarczuk's Flights, The London Magazine, 2017