THE LAST BROTHER, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

201pp., paperback, First English Language Edition Reprint, London, (2010) 2011

First published in French in 2007 as Le denier frère.

Winner of the 2007 FNAC Prize for Fiction, 

Novel set in Mauritius during World War II.

Nine-year-old Raj's abusive father works as a prison guard, overseeing European Jewish exiles interned by the British after being turned away from Palestine. When Raj is admitted to the prison’s hospital after a severe beating by his father, he befriends David, one of the orphaned refugees. Raj helps David to escape and the two boys flee together through the forest.

"A lushly beautiful child's-eye tale ...  It half-reveals an extraordinary episode from the Second World War, but through a lyrical mist that never clear away. In Geoffrey Strachan's sumptuous translation, we follow a fairy-tale flight from persecutions, small and large, that bonds two boys from different ends of a suffering Earth." Boyd Tonkin, Independent

"The rich implications of history and the complex political and social hierarchies that lie behind its comparatively simple story would have won the admiration of Margeurite Yourcenar." Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement

Nathacha Appanah (b. 1973), a French-Mauritian of Indian origin, grew up in Mauritius and worked there as a journalist before moving to France in 1998. Her novel Tropic of Violence was awarded the Prix Femina des Lyceens in 2016, as well as seven other French literary awards.