For the May Murder Monday, Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to award-winning Melbourne author, Nilima Rao, a Fijian Indian Australian who has always referred to herself as ‘culturally confused’.
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Nilima’s critically acclaimed debut, A Disappearance in Fiji, set in 1914, was winner of the 2024 American Library Association Reading List for Mystery Fiction and appeared in multiple US best-of-year roundups (being named as an Amazon Best Debut of the Year and culture website CrimeReads’ Best Historical Fiction of the Year).
The setting is of particular significance to Nilima’s family whose great-grandparents, were transported from India to become coolies.
In 1914, Fiji was one of the newer colonies of the British Empire, having ceded sovereignty to the Queen in 1874. Slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire, and to fill the gap of cheap labour required in the colonies, a system of indentured servitude had been set up, sending Indian labourers all over the world, from Trinidad to Mauritius and many other colonies.
In the case of Fiji, approximately 60,000 Indians went to Fiji to work in the sugar cane plantations. The Indians who signed up for this program were poor, often indigent, and generally illiterate and subject to shocking exploitation.
Her latest book is A Shipwreck in Fiji, which came out in April.
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Murder Monday interviews are available on Sisters in Crime’s YouTube channel at 6 pm once a month on a Monday.