Tropic of violence : a novel
(Book)

"Copyright ©2016 by Editions Gallimard. English translation copyright ©2018 by Geoffrey Strachan. First published in the French language as Tropique de la violence by Editions Gallimard, Paris in 2016, First published in English by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus, London, in 2018."--t.p. verso.

Marie, a nurse in Mayotte, a far-flung, tropical department of France in the Indian Ocean, adopts a baby abandoned at birth by his mother, a refugee from Comoros. She names him Moïse and raises him as her own-- and she avoids his increasing questions about his origins as he grows up. When Marie suddenly dies, thirteen-year-old Moïse is left completely alone, plunged into uncertainty and turmoil. In a state of panic, he runs away from home, and sets himself on a collision course with the gangs of Gaza, the largest and most infamous slum on the island.