Born in Mauritius, Ananda Devi is one of the leading francophone writers of the Indian Ocean. Among her many awards are the Neustadt Prize and the Prix de la langue française, and she is the author of novels, short stories, nonfiction, and poetry. Her books available in English translation are Indian Tango, Eve Out of Her Ruins, The Living Days, and When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me.

Jeffrey Zuckerman is a translator from the French of books by the artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Dardenne brothers, the queer writers Jean Genet and Hervé Guibert, and the Mauritian novelists Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, and Carl de Souza. He has been awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, the French Voices Grand Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.