BookBrowse Reviews A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao

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A disgraced police officer seeks redemption with the case of a missing Indian woman on a sugarcane plantation, confronting the bitter realities of caste, race and power in 1914 Fiji.

Once a promising and rising police officer in his native India and in Hong Kong, Sergeant Akal Singh is banished to the beautiful but lonely archipelago of Fiji in 1914 to pay for a professional misstep that haunts him. In her debut novel A Disappearance in Fiji, Nilima Rao introduces this dynamic protagonist bent on resurrecting his career and finding justice, no matter the cost.

After six months working in the Suva Division of the Fijian Constabulary, Singh's only case is that of a peeping tom known as The Night Prowler, who has a penchant for showing up naked outside of locals' windows. But when a plantation owner reports one of his indentured servants is missing, and the Fiji Times runs a contradictory story that she was kidnapped, British Inspector-General Thurstrom assigns Singh to unravel the conflicting accounts and locate the woman before an Indian delegation reviewing the indentured servitude program hears about her disappearance.

Singh is Thurstrom's most senior Indian officer, but as a Punjabi Sikh in colonial Fiji, he is a "curiosity" to many. His emerald-green uniform and neatly piled turban mark him as different from other Indian officers, who "resented him for not being more like them." Rao explores Singh's complex ideas of his caste as a Sikh, what he terms the "warrior caste," within the matrix of an oppressive colonial indentured system that uses and abuses impoverished Indian immigrants. Singh sets off for the plantation with Dr. Robert Holmes, an experienced physician enraged by the indignities indentured workers suffer. Upon arrival, Holmes heads off to treat the workers and Singh to question anyone who has knowledge of Kunti, the missing woman.

Walking past the open doors of the worker huts, Singh comes face to face with the brutal reality of the indentured in Fiji:

"… he could see a woman cooking a late dinner for her husband, who was sitting outside in a posture of exhaustion. This scene was replicated throughout the coolie lines. Akal wondered where the women found the energy … All the men were unnervingly still. Akal passed unacknowledged through a landscape of inanimate bodies."

Rao develops the mystery of Kunti's disappearance slowly, building up tension through the racist scorn Singh endures from the plantation owners, Henry and Susan Parkins, as well as his own biases. Singh is a soft-spoken observer in the uncomfortable exchanges Rao so realistically depicts. Despite the caste divide between himself and the indentured Indians, he immediately recognizes their situation as slavery under another name. As he moves between the worlds of the planter aristocracy with its overt racism and the quiet, bleak despair of the workers, Singh senses that Kunti's disappearance may portend a darker reality on the Parkins plantation. Venkat, Kunti's husband, suspects that she most likely ran off with another man, the white plantation overseer John Brown. But Divya, Kunti's daughter, is adamant that her mother would never leave her willingly, which Singh believes to be true.

Sifting through the tangled, silent web of secrets on the plantation, Singh finds help synthesizing clues in his companion Holmes, as they reflect on each day's developments from the overseer's verandah. Rao renders this growing friendship in warm prose, as Singh battles "fear against the desire to bare his soul" to the doctor about the scandal that brought him to Fiji. Holmes is a kind, patient and principled ally Singh relies upon as new and disturbing revelations are uncovered among the women servants on the plantation.

The abuses of colonialism are on full display in the novel's depiction of indentured Indian women's experiences, which force Singh to grapple with the ripples of the system's evil. Rao delivers a tightly wound mystery that surprises until its stunning conclusion, spearheaded by an endearing protagonist who will delight readers. A Disappearance in Fiji is a gem of a debut novel and the start of an exciting new series not to be missed.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2023, and has been updated for the June 2024 edition. Click here to go to this issue.