Despite their many differences, the novels discussed in the preceding chapters all deal with the problems of belonging in multicultural Mauritius as experienced by impoverished, disadvantaged sections of society. In contrast, Bertrand de Robillard, whose L’Homme qui penche (2003) and Une interminable distraction au monde (2011) will be the focus of this chapter, hails, like the characters of his novels, from the socially advantaged, ‘isolated but dominant’ Franco- Mauritian community. Robillard's work is particularly interesting for our examination of the diverse forms of belonging articulated in contemporary Mauritian fiction since, as Srilata Ravi points out, ‘Mauritian narratives rarely touch on what could now be a thorny political issue: the identity of a financially empowered Franco-Mauritian minority’. L’Homme qui penche and Une interminable distraction au monde both portray the seemingly vain ‘quête spirituelle’ of a middle-class male Franco-Mauritian protagonist who, like the author himself, feels like ‘un Occidental égaré sous les tropiques’. Robillard's works depict ‘un personnage qui [est] mal à l’aise dans son environnement, […] un personnage en quête de lui-même’ whose existential identity crisis is compounded, in multi-ethnic Mauritius, by the stereotypical associations that accrue to his white skin. Indeed, it could be argued that the critical neglect of Robillard's work to date is due in part to the author’s ethnicity but also, as we shall explore, to the traditionally metropolitan intellectual concern with le quotidien with which his novels engage – neither of which fits easily within conventional perceptions of francophone postcolonial literature.

Although Une interminable distraction au monde is not a sequel to L’Homme qui penche, they can together be seen to constitute a literary diptych examining the same fraught issue of Franco-Mauritian belonging from different but complementary perspectives. The interrelation between the two works is implicitly suggested by both similarities and differences between their epigraphs: ‘Enfonce-toi dans l’inconnu qui creuse. Oblige-toi à tournoyer’ in L’Homme qui penche, and ‘La maturité est aussi la chose suivante: ne plus chercher au dehors mais laisser parler la vie intime, avec son rythme qui seul compte’ in Une interminable distraction au monde. Both epigraphs prefigure the novels’ common focus on an individual quest for belonging and self-knowledge, and on the gradual shift from a wide, external search to a narrow, internal process of introspection and self-examination.