Romesh Gunesekera’s novel The Prisoner of Paradise is set in the island of Mauritius — a meeting point of Asia and Africa controlled by European colonists — at a time when it is going through great upheaval.

It is 1825 and the slave trade on which the island’s plantations thrived is on its way out. The Indian convicts brought in by the British to replace the African slaves are simmering with discontent.
A talented writer, Gunesekera paints a picture of an island with lush vegetation and a plethora of races and languages — outwardly idyllic but with hints that all is not quite as calm and beautiful as it seems. A storm may be brewing.
Much of the story is told through the eyes and emotions of young Englishwoman Lucy Gladwell. The expectations and sensibilities of the orphaned Lucy as she lands on the island to live with her genteel aunt and blustering, officious uncle are evocative.
“Lucy began to sense just how different her life in the colony might turn out. Not only for the fragrance in every breath of air, the brightness in every colour, but because the acoustics of life itself seemed different: sounds of fluttering everywhere, the pounding of the sea a dozen miles away. Her heart like a drum in a symphony of sensualities.”
A world so different — in its multi-race residents, cultures, habits, the trees and shrubs and the very air — excites Lucy, at that vulnerable age, that threshold where a girl becomes a woman. Her head is filled with dreams of romance and adventure, but also notions of a righteous world and a growing sense of self and sexuality, of being more than a woman to be married off.
The first half of the story is slow-paced as Gunesekera introduces and fleshes out the characters and the backdrop. The gentle aunt preoccupied with her beautiful house and garden, the uncle — a typecast pompous British official — is boorish, insensitive and racist to boot.
Then there is the exotic, dashing Don Lambordar, who lives on the island as interpreter for an exiled prince from Ceylon, and fits right into Lucy’s romantic notions fed by Irish writer Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh.
Words are Don and Lucy’s main meeting point and there are long, exploring exchanges which at times are quite tedious.
As the story unfolds, Lucy discovers that the island is not quite the Eden she had imagined, that the land she thought was full of poetry is in a language with nuances she does not understand.
The Prisoner of Paradise is promising, but does not quite live up to expectations built in the opening chapters and ends up disappointing, much as the island fails Lucy.
The novel has some beautiful descriptions, some engaging conversations, occasional profound observations and an interesting build-up and dénouement, but for me they did not hold together to make a thought-provoking or touch-the-heart tale.
But one must say that Lucy’s confused character is quite brilliantly portrayed through her reactions to the island and events on it. Her constant desire to break the bonds, the boundaries of the structured, hierarchical society and the contained life expected of her are well played out against similar yet very different desires of the plantation workers and the exiles from Ceylon.
“Freedom is the song of the heart that cannot be stopped,” says the prisoner Kishore as he is questioned in the governor’s room in his handcuffs and leg irons. It finds an echo in Lucy’s heart.
The characters of Lucy, her uncle, aunt, and the Ceylonese exiles are well-developed but one cannot say the same of the rest of the characters, too many perhaps. The only character that makes an impression is the enigmatic, philosophical Amos, a former slave whose defiant daughter plays a crucial role in the high-pitched crescendo of this novel. The boy servant, Muru, is captivating but reduced to a prop; the Ceylonese prince is an entertaining cameo.
Amos is interesting, a sort of a sutradhar, who explains events and is a link between different characters, a slave who bought his freedom, who is a bit unbelievable, especially when he makes profound pronouncements like: “We live on the wings of imagination,” or “To imagine is to embrace, not to escape.” There are some natty ones, too, like when talking about colour and racial prejudice, he says: “The black can be surmounted, if one has but a touch of royal blue.”
Perhaps Gunasekera takes on too much in The Prisoner of Paradise — a search for identity and for freedom, slavery and colonialism, cross cultural and racial tensions, even the gender issue.
The multiplicity of characters — many of them making fleeting appearances, like the nursery keeper’s daughter, the Indian landlord-businessman, the French plantation owner, a young British sergeant in love with a Sinhala prisoner — add to a certain messiness that could charm if one sees each as illustrating one of the many issues the author takes up.
The complexities of a colony located at a sort of meeting point of India and Africa is a fertile ground for a writer like Gunesekera. His prose is often exquisite, but, as often, sadly, lapses into the banal.
Yet, The Prisoner of Paradise has a captivating beginning and an equally riveting end as the story winds up in a horrific tragedy against the backdrop of a devastating Indian Ocean hurricane that can be interpreted in more ways than the obvious one.