Violence et effondrement dans la fiction insulaire francophone contemporaine : l’île comme dystopie ? (Alfred Alexandre, Les Villes assassines ; Nathacha Appanah, Tropique de la violence)
Violence and social collapse in francophone island narratives: from utopia to dystopia? (Alfred Alexandre, Les Villes assassines; Nathacha Appanah, Tropique de la violence)

Summary/Abstract: Western imagination has often portrayed islands as heavenly places, or even utopias. However, contemporary island narratives often put violence, social inequalities, as well as climate issues and topics of exile at the heart of their narrative. The districts of "Gaza" and "West Eden" in Alfred Alexandre’s novel Les Villes assassines (2011) and in Nathacha Appanah’s Tropique de la violence (2015) are indeed depicted as zones of extreme precarity. This article examines the relevance of the conceptual category of “dystopia” for addressing certain tropes of French-speaking island literature. The link between dystopia and the popular notion of “collapse” shall lead us to examine new modes of representation of contemporary islands in these two novels, particularly when discussing the prevalent topics of slums and undocumented immigrants.

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