Diego Garcia – WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2022: A Novel

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Through the intricately woven histories and the corresponding fictions within fictions, the compassion expressed in Diego Garciahighlights the absence of it in those who, forsaking their obligations towards other human beings, exiled the Chagossians from their home. The island is 14 miles long and 4 miles wide, surrounding one of the most beautiful natural harbors in the world. David Vine turns his anthropological lenses not only on the victims, the people who were expelled to make room for a military base, but on the perpetrators as well, the American officials who oversaw the tragedy. If a plane had no passengers on it, and with captain approval, a flight attendant would be allowed to sit in the cockpit for take-off and landing.

Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base

Many believe that the event of the plane turning off its communications, flying low, and changing course wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by military intelligence. The central theme is the displacement of the islanders from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean when the main island Diego Garcia was made into an American military base in the 1970s. It did so by providing a snapshot of how queer Muslims navigate, negotiate and come to their gender, religious and sexual subjectivities in relation to the social institutions around them. And for a more enthusiastic and insightful review of the undoubted strengths of this novel read Paul’s review here ( https://www. Coupled with Philippe Sands’s the Last Colony , the two books present a human tragedy and a fascinating insight into a piece of geopolitics that has existed below the radar for many years.To open out the novel to a kind of continuous practice of writing, writing collaboratively, of living and working together. The island is, therefore, an ideal support facility for tactical aircraft and ships moving from the Philippines to the Middle East or Persian Gulf. Bill says no supplies ran out while he was there, but there were shortages of 'luxury' items like photographic film. But ultimately Diego Garcia a novel about the true fact of a collaborative fiction authored by the US and British governments, created to maintain military power and to dispossess a people of their homeland. The American presence on Diego Garcia also serves as a deterrent to Soviet adventurism in the Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia by Natasha Soobramanien | Goodreads

Here we have a novel which itself has layers of performative art – with the authorial stand-in narrators discussing the project which lies behind the book we are reading and whether performative art can really capture the experience of others but more so as the novel itself is only part of a wider project of tumblr performances, extract publications and so on.

Three years ago, the International Court of Justice, the United Nation's highest court, ruled that the British occupation of the islands was unlawful and that the archipelago was part of Mauritius.

Goldsmiths prize goes to collaborative duo Natasha

Kawczynski said the government's reasoning was 'poppycock' and that no-one had even asked the Chagossians if they wanted to be part of Mauritius.He tells them he is named for his mother’s island in the Chagos Archipelago, which she and her community were forced to leave by British soldiers in 1973. The naval base on Diego Garcia is used for long-range bomber operations, Special Forces staging, and the replenishment of both nuclear-powered submarines and naval surface forces. As one digs further into Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams’ beguiling, wilfully disjointed quasi-novel Diego Garcia, certain details begin to link together, even as the form becomes stranger and less linear… There is a prevalent sense of mild interior-life chaos, simmering anger at spiteful injustice, and the feeling that events herein are profoundly real, perhaps because they are.

Diego Garcia | Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability Diego Garcia | Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability

If you look at the amount of investment the Chinese have in Mauritius, I would argue that for all intents and purposes they control Mauritius,' he told DailyMail. Against the dogmatism of the single-voiced fiction that informed the British government’s expulsion of the Chagossian people from their homeland, they respond not only with rigorous critique, but also with an understanding of the relationship between voice and power which shapes the very form of Diego Garcia. This tropical island experiences heavy rainfall year-round and is heavily vegetated with native trees and coconut palms. But on the flip side, he enjoyed 'living in a beautiful place nearly divorced from the modern world', able to concentrate on his photography skills. The narrators seem to think the best way to fight injustice is to invent new nouns (honger, tubes, screens and blocks for hunger, cigarettes, smartphones and books) while doing no work at all, believing in wild conspiracy theories about the imminent collapse of the financial system and performing some desultory trading in bitcoins – all while complaining about a lack of money of course.The Chagos Islands may be little more than specks in the middle of the Indian Ocean, but they are at the center of a looming diplomatic row over a key American military base and the rise of Chinese power. This would be an strong Goldsmiths contender other than the fact that few literary prizes allow collaborative works other than translations.