The Sugar Baron’s Women

The book is centred on an island with sugar plantations and is set in the twentieth century. As a consequence of slavery the population is multi-ethnic with a mix of French settlers and Indian and Chinese workers who came to the island after slavery was abolished.There is no integration between these different groups. The story is based on a love affair between a rich French settler and a young impoverished Indian girl.The story is sensitively told ,is easy to read and the book is difficult to put down. I recommend it.

Although I quite enjoyed this story, I found the style of writing very laborious and repetitious. This is a pity because the author obviously knows a great deal about Mauritious and has woven a very readable tale around the culture of the island. I have asked a number of my friends to read it, but don't yet know their responses!

I bought this as a present for my mum and she loves it I will be looking for more by this author

Brilliant read this book should be on all schools curriculum ******

For an insight into both interracial relationships and economic tensions in a former colony, it would be difficult to beat this short work of fiction. Set on the fictional Indian Ocean island of Miraucia, it recounts the unhappy marriage of the eponymous `sugar baron', Philippe Antroppe, followed by many years of happiness with Mala/Marlene, who, like many of the sugar-plantation workers, is of Indian origin. This is followed by the `Romeo and Juliet' type love affair of their daughter, Desiree and Ah Wong, from a Chinese family. Descriptions of the landscape provide a three dimensional feel to this novella. Recommended! Pat Pinsent

To me this novella has more than one theme, which all come together to make it a charming story on a French-owned sugar plantation a century ago. But, above all, Jacques Lee's The Sugar Baron's Women is a love story in an exotic setting - Miraucia. This fictional island is Mauritius with the spelling re-arranged.The sugar baron's women are his wife, their daughter and granddaughter: they desert him. The other women are an Indian cane field worker - a forbidden fruit - and their daughter: these two women complete his happiness.But this is a tropical island in the Indian Ocean where socialising with non-white is still taboo and the price Philippe Antroppe has to pay is losing everything that represents his former privileged life as a sugar baron.The three of them end up living in a forsaken and lonely part of the island, whowever their idyllic life is shattered when something quite unexpected happens...How I wish this was a full length novel and I could go on reading about these fascinating characters in a world where - another theme - the war between the English and the French is still being fought.