Marcel Cabon

Marcel Cabon (pseudonym, Jacques Marsèle) (February 29, 1912 at Curepipe - January 31, 1972) was a writer, journalist and poet.

Life

Marcel Cabon grew up in the village of Petite Rivière Noire on the west side of the island of Mauritius. He began his writing career in 1931 with the publication of his first verses, L'Essor. As a journalist, he traveled to Madagascar between 1946 and 1947. He was not welcomed by local journalists and, in 1947, the authorities deported him back to Mauritius. However, it was his stay in Madagascar, that inspired Cabon to write Kélibé-Kéliba in 1956.

After a stint as a radio presenter, Cabon returned to print media and, in 1956, became editor of the Mauritian. Subsequently, he also held the same post on Advance, a pro-labor daily newspaper.

His novel Namasté earned him the literary pseudonym, Marcel Cabon. In the novel the hero, Ram, is a young Indo-Mauritian who inherits a piece of land and becomes popular in the village where he lives. He encourages the peasants to help each other by building a school and creating a road. But when his wife is killed by the collapse of his house during a tropical storm, Ram loses his purpose. Namasté was reissued in 1981 and later, to accommodate the educational institutions that have included his novel in their programs, reprinted.

In 1970, Cabon left the management of Advance to become the Chief of Information Service of the Mauritian Radio-Television, associated with the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation.

Works

• Namaste, novel (1965). Port Louis: Eds. of the Indian Ocean, 1981.
• Brasse-au-Vent, novel (1968). Port Louis: Eds. of the Indian Ocean, 1989.