Books from Réunion

At Josie's is a compact cookbook by Boqetly Reore, a chef originally from Réunion Island who now lives in France. The book collects recipes from her family kitchen, organized into starters, main dishes, and desserts. Réunion is a small French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, where Creole cooking draws on French, Indian, Chinese, and East African food traditions. That mix of influences gives the island's cuisine a distinct character, visible in the range of dishes gathered here.

The collection includes 21 recipes in total: five starters, twelve main courses, and four desserts. Among them are sausage rougail, a tomato-based dish common across Réunion households, and fish cari, a curry-style preparation that reflects the island's Indian Ocean roots. Samosas and chili candies appear alongside a yogurt cake, showing how the cookbook moves between savory and sweet. Each recipe is presented with personal tips from the author, aimed at home cooks working with ingredients available outside the island. The book is a short, focused introduction to a regional cooking style shaped by centuries of migration and exchange across the Indian Ocean.

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Frême, a young African man, has been taken from his home and forced into slavery on Réunion, a volcanic island in the Indian Ocean lying east of Madagascar. He is haunted by memories of Marie, a white woman he loved in his youth. When he finds her again on the island and their relationship draws violent persecution, the two escape together into the forested interior of Réunion, where steep ravines and dense vegetation offer cover from pursuit.

In the forest they encounter a community of maroons, a term used across slave-holding colonies for enslaved people who escaped captivity and formed independent settlements in remote terrain. These groups survived through cooperation and constant vigilance, knowing that recapture could mean severe punishment or death. The novel follows their efforts to hold onto freedom under pressure from the colonial order that surrounds them.

The book is the only known novel by Louis Timagène Houat, a Black abolitionist from Réunion who was sent into political exile. Written in the nineteenth century, it went largely unread for generations before being rediscovered and translated for new audiences. Its setting draws on the specific geography and plantation economy of Réunion during the period when slavery was still legal in French colonies.

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