La Réunion by Roger Vailland (1958): An Island’s Autopsy

In 1958, Roger Vailland and his wife left for Reunion Island to rest and this is where Vailland draws a disenchanted portrait of the island. Despite its character of lost paradise, the island was treated in a negative way: Vailland therefore falls into the category of the great dysphoric and critical travel tales of the 20th century. Marked no doubt by his communist convictions, the writer constructs an anti-narrative in which he reduces Reunion Island to a mineral and sinister land: his work oscillates between the travel narrative and the historical-political treatise in which he analyses and comments on the island's recent history.