Mauritius - Arts And Entertainment

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Like many reputable holiday companies we are ABTA registered, our ABTA membership number is 65310.

We also use ATOL protected tour operators. However if you wish to use a tour operator who is not ATOL protected then we will take our supplier failure insurance on your behalf.

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The arts flourish in Mauritius despite a lack of appreciation and encouragement from the outside world. Local authors and poets who want to be published often have to pay for the printing of their own works unless they can find sponsorship from foreign cultural organisations.

The Ministry of Arts and Culture runs a useful website with information on Mauritian artists, a list of art galleries and museums, and opportunities to invest in the Mauritian arts scene.

The Alliance-Française is very active in its encouragement of the arts and the French language, so much so that the British Council which had slumped into inactivity, was revived at the end of 1987 with the appointment of a new representative.

Several slim volumes of verse, belles-lettres and travelogues by local authors are to be found hidden away in Mauritian bookshops. Robert Edward Hart, who died in 1954, was Mauritius’s most renowned poet, and was awarded the OBE and the French Légion d’honneur. His house at Souillac is now a museum.

Mauritian writer and painter, Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81), is best known for his Sens Plastique, a compilation of several thousand aphorisms and pensées. Born in Vacoas of a French family, de Chazal wrote in French. His surrealist work was highly praised by French literary figures.

Much of Mauritian literature is written in French, some in English and very little in Creole. Playwright Dev Virahsawmy, a retired politician, is an advocate of the Creole language and writes works only in that language.

Each June, Le Prince Maurice Hotel hosts Le Prince Maurice Prize for literature with a theme of love. The prize alternates between English and French writers each year and the winner receives a two-week stay at the hotel.

Shelf-loads of books, mostly in French, have been written about Mauritius, many with slavery as their theme. The island has been the setting for novels, too, the most famous being the pastoral French novel, Paul et Virginie, by Bernadin de Saint Pierre, which was first published in 1773. Its sentimental tale of love and heartbreak, based on the wrecking of the St-Géran in 1744, is remarkable for the accuracy of its nature notes and description of an idyllic Mauritius when it resembled a garden of Eden.

For its population and high literacy rate, Mauritius is poorly served for bookshops (librairies). While there are a number of them on the island, most of these combine stationery supplies with a stock of books for students and a few general volumes in French and some in English. The best bookshops are in Curepipe and Port Louis.

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