a crime thriller that depicts the injustices of Fiji

At first glance, “Sugar: An Ethnographic Novel” by Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips might seem like a relatively light vacation read: a crime novel set on the glittering paradise island of Fiji.

But beyond the cute (excuse the pun) cover and title, this novel tackles some serious issues, including colonialism, globalization, structural inequality, exploitative labor and trade practices, and the diabetes epidemic in Fiji.

Review: Sugar: An Ethnographic Novel – Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips (University of Toronto Press)

Set in Suva, where a tropical cyclone is threatening, Sugar follows three strangers from different cultural backgrounds. They are implicated in a brutal murder, a crime that exposes uncomfortable truths about the dark side of global development in Fiji.

Sugar is an ethnographic novel written by two Australian-based researchers: political analyst Edward Narain and medical anthropologist Tarryn Phillips, drawing on their respective research and experiences.

Narain, a senior adviser to the Fiji Labor Party, is descended from Indian indentured laborers. He spent much of his childhood among indigenous Fijians. Phillips has been conducting ethnographic research with Fijian communities on issues of poverty, health and social justice for over a decade.

Three very different lives

Sugar follows the lives of three main characters in the lead-up to and aftermath of the cyclone: ​​Hannah, a naive but well-meaning Australian health volunteer, Rishika, a jaded Indo-Fijian amateur historian, and Isikeli, a troubled teenager from Fiji (iTaukei). for his diabetic grandmother. These three live very different lives marked by gender, class/caste and ethnic differences.

The young and hopeful Hannah is a “voluntourist”. During the week she works on things that seem a bit boring and tedious to her, while on the weekend she parties and travels.

Isikeli is a young and troubled iTaukei (indigenous) man who lives in an informal settlement, also known as a squatter settlement. He cares for his grandmother, who suffers from diabetes, and his niece, while his mother works away from home at one of the island's many resorts. By day, Isikeli is one of the “Coconut Boys,” disenfranchised youth who collect and sell coconuts. At night he is a petty criminal.

The story begins with Rishika at home, on the fifth day of mourning for her husband Vijay – murdered as Cyclone Dorothy swept across the island. Rishika is an Indo-Fijian historian who put her career on hold after her marriage. Her personal research into her family's history – with a focus on her Indian ancestors, who were brought as indentured laborers to work on Fiji's sugar plantations under the British Empire – runs throughout the novel.

In a racially motivated slur, Isikeli is accused of Vijay's murder. He then asks Hannah for help. In her search for her husband's murderer, Rishika eventually enlists Isikeli's help to catch the real culprit, proving Isikeli's innocence in the process.

Contract work

“Sugar: An Ethnographic Novel” follows the tradition of Indian diaspora narratives written by second- and third-generation migrants (like Narain) that often mix autobiography and fiction.

Sugar remains one of Fiji's main exports. According to the Fijian Ministry of Health, almost one in three Fijians have been diagnosed with diabetes. In their book, Narain and Phillips creatively use Zucker as a lens to examine the structural inequality over time caused by settler colonialism:

Rishika thinks about sugar as it has been spread throughout history. It has made people rich and supported empires like diamonds, cotton and gold. It enslaved Native Americans on foreign shores and fueled ethnic conflicts between them and their hosts.

Rishika discovers that her great-grandfather was among the thousands of Indians forcibly recruited by the British colonial administration to work on sugar cane plantations in Fiji, as well as all colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The system of indentured labor created after the abolition of slave labor was somewhere between slavery and wage labor. Aspiring workers were offered the “dream” of moving to an island paradise, the opportunity to achieve social mobility outside the Indian caste system, make money and return as wealthy men.

Actually in Fiji Girmitiyas (the Indian term for indentured workers) were treated by colonial settlers as distinctly different from other workers because of their need for discipline and control.

While these workers were technically paid for their work (by task, not hourly wages), plantation overseers also controlled their housing and food supplies. Regardless of how much people worked, they often found themselves in debt to their employers. And if they wanted to return home, they would have to sign up to stay on the plantation for another five years. This is sometimes referred to as the “dirty trick” of the indenture contract.

This pattern of violence was repeated by both the overseers and the husbands of the Indian women who were also brought to Fiji. Gender-based violence on the plantations became the blueprint for unequal and violent relationships between men and women in contemporary Fiji. Today, Fiji has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the Pacific.

Family violence is a highly stigmatized topic and is brought up in “Sugar” when Rishika remembers her husband's mother hiding bruises. She would cover them “by bundling and hanging her sari in a certain way; big purple-yellow reminders that dinner should be on the table at the right time.”

Sugar: An Ethnographic Novel is an elegant and intimate depiction of everyday life in Fiji, deeply honest about the struggles and inequalities that often hide beneath the tourist-focused image of an island paradise, and revealing its beauty in all its complexity.