Books from Seychelles

Aldabra is a raised coral atoll in the western Indian Ocean, part of the Seychelles. It sits roughly 1,100 kilometers southwest of the main Seychelles islands and remains one of the most isolated inhabited atolls on Earth. Tony Beamish's book documents this remote place and the life it supports, with particular attention to the population of Aldabra giant tortoises, a species that survived on the atoll while similar tortoises elsewhere in the Indian Ocean were hunted to extinction.

Beamish combines field observation with accounts of the conservation campaigns that sought to keep Aldabra free from large-scale development. During the 1960s, proposals to build a military airfield on the atoll drew international opposition from scientists and conservationists who argued that construction would destroy habitats found nowhere else. The book traces these pressures and the arguments made on the atoll's behalf.

Beyond the tortoises, Aldabra hosts nesting seabirds, coconut crabs, and marine life sustained by the shallow lagoon at the atoll's center. Beamish records these details alongside reflections on what it means for a place to exist largely outside human contact, and what is at stake when that contact arrives.

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Discover Seychelles Creole Cuisine is a full-colour cookbook presenting everyday recipes from households across the Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands in the western Indian Ocean. Published by Jasmine Creations, the book runs to 156 pages and covers salads, chutneys, soups, side dishes, main courses, desserts, and condiments. Each recipe is accompanied by a photograph of the finished dish.

Seychellois Creole cooking draws on a blend of African, French, Indian, and Chinese influences shaped by the islands' history of settlement and trade. Fish and coconut feature heavily, alongside tropical fruits and spices that grow in the warm, humid climate. The book treats these recipes as home cooking rather than restaurant fare, focusing on the dishes families prepare on a regular basis.

Beyond the recipes, the book includes photographs of the islands' distinctive plants and wildlife. The Seychelles are home to species found nowhere else, including the coco de mer palm and the Aldabra giant tortoise. These images give the cookbook a sense of place, connecting the food to the landscape and ecology of the archipelago.

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Silence of the Chagos is a novel by Shenaz Patel set against the forced removal of the entire population of Diego Garcia, one of the islands in the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The story follows Charlesia, a woman who was given no warning and only an hour to gather her belongings before being put on a boat bound for Mauritius. Government officials told the islanders that Diego Garcia was closed, and that none of them would be allowed to return.

Each afternoon Charlesia walks to the end of a quay and stares out across the water toward the place she was taken from. The red headscarf she wears and her fixed routine give shape to a grief that has no official resolution. The novel is rooted in real events: during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Britain removed the Chagossian people from their home islands to make way for a military base on Diego Garcia. Decades later, the displaced community and their descendants continued to seek the right to return.

Patel's narrative stays close to the experience of one person within a larger collective displacement. The book draws its tension from the gap between the quiet persistence of daily life in exile and the scale of what was taken without consent or explanation.

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