The journey of an Indian Francophone writer’s debut novel from the realm of Francophonie readership to English literary circles, following the launch of its English translation, makes an interesting story in itself, sort of like an engaging entr’acte between two opera acts.

Oslo-based writer Ari Gautier with city roots, was at the Alliance Française recently to discuss how he himself evolved, as the world changed around him, especially the publishing space, during the intervening years of his debut novel Le carnet secret de Lakshmi (Le Lys bleu éditions/circa 2017) and Lakshmi’s Secret Diary (Columbia University Press/2024) translated into English by Sheela Mahadevan, a lecturer in French at the University of Liverpool.

In between, Gautier wrote Le Thinnai (2017) — whose English version, The Thinnai, followed in 2021 — that was set in a predominantly proletarian, never-showcased part of erstwhile Pondicherry, and a bewildering mix of Creoles, colonial war veterans, proud communists, and French citizens who never left India’s shores. In 2014, the novelist came out with Nocturne Pondicherry, a collection of short stories.

The writer, who discussed various aspects of his work with Ritu Tyagi, an associate professor at Pondicherry University over a session, recalled the early struggles.

“Finding a publisher was not easy because the French literary ecosystem until then had acceptance only for African Francophone writings. So it was more natural to encounter Algerian novelists from the Maghreb or Caribbean authors in the French literary landscape. From the publisher perspective, erstwhile Pondicherry was an unknown entity”.

In contrast, Lakshmi’s Secret Diary not only got a visibility enhancement courtesy of its publishing house, but drew effusive praise from the likes of Geetanjali Shree, the first Indian writer to win the International Booker Prize (2022), French novelist-critic Maryse Conde and Mauritian writer Ananda Devi — Geetanjali in the blurb termed the book Gautier’s “gift to a lost humankind”.

“The acknowledgement by such illustrious writers shifts the entire paradigm…of even a small-time writer from a tiny city within four Boulevards taking the history of the place globally,” said Mr. Gautier.

Lakshmi’s Secret Diary is set in a magical city, where the story unfolds through the shared conversations of a triad of anthropomorphic creatures — Lakshmi, the fictionalised incarnate of an actual temple elephant who was a celebrated mascot in popular culture, Alphonse the flying fish, and a canine nicknamed Tripod Dog Baba.

The storyline evolves through a blend of fictional elements, caste structures, mythology, and even cinema references.

“The idea was to tell the history of erstwhile Pondicherry before the arrival of the Europeans… very few people talk about it,” Mr. Gautier said.

“The entire archives or most of the literature which exists about the place sets 1673, denoting the arrival of the first European trader on the shores, as the reference point. It’s as if nothing existed before. In that sense, the novel is a prequel to the documented perspective,” he said.

The flying fish is a symbol of the spiritual legacy of Siddhars who were an integral part of society in ancient times, he added.

He wonders if there was any other comparable fisher belt in the Indian sub-continent that housed four temples, two mosques and one cemetery long before the French set foot on these shores. “This part of the coastal village’s legacy does not find a place in the colonial version of history that sets the narrative of assigning all progress as a benign and beneficial outcome of conquest. I am challenging this skew by offering a fresh and indigenous perspective on the history and culture of the place,” he further said.

In the novel’s schemata, the temple elephant Lakshmi embodies the post-colonial, and the flying fish a personification of the Siddhars (seers) of the land, while the canine chronicles happenings during the early 1960s following the withdrawal of the French.

“The real story of Pondicherry is a coalescing of all three perspectives….from the pre-colonial era to the Creole period,” said Mr. Gautier.