Marcel Cabon


Marcel Cabon was a writer, journalist and poet.

Life

Marcel Cabon grew up in the village of Petite Rivière Noire, in the west of the island Mauritius. He began his writing career in 1931 with the publication of his first verses,L'Essor. He travelled to Madagascar between 1946 and 1947 as a journalist. Local journalists did not welcome him and the authorities eventually deported him in 1947 to Mauritius. Because of his stay in Madagascar, Cabon was inspired to write Kélibé-Kéliba in 1956.
After a stint as a radio presenter, Cabon returned to print media and became editor of the Mauritian in 1956. Subsequently, he held the same post on the daily Advance, a pro-labuor newspaper.
His novel Namasté forged his literary reputation despite publishing under a nom de plume. In the novel the hero, Ram, is a young Indo-Mauritian who becomes popular in the village, where he lives on a piece of land he inherited. 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. This was followed by reprints, to accommodate the educational institutions that include this novel in their syllabuses.
In 1970, Cabon left the management of Advance to become the Chief of the Information Service of the Mauritian Radio-Television, ancestor of the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation.

Works