Library Weekly

On 19 October 2004, Seychellois poet Antoine Abel died in Mahé at the age of 69. He is considered the father of Seychelles literature.

Antoine Abel was born on 27 November 1934 into a modest peasant family in the district of Anse Boileau, in the west of the island of Mahé, the main island of the Seychelles archipelago. He completed his primary schooling at Anse Boileau and learned masonry.

In 1955, Antoine Abel had the opportunity to go to Switzerland for his secondary education. He returned 4 years later and took a position as a teacher. After some time, he went to the United Kingdom to complete his studies at the University of Reading. There he obtained a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Education Science for Rural Areas. After a brief return to Mahé during which he taught agriculture, he returned to the United Kingdom to attend a teacher training course at the University of Bristol. This last training allowed him to join the Seychelles Teacher Training College (École normale Supérieure) in Victoria as a teacher, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.

The last fifteen to twenty years of his life were marked by illness, and his literary production was affected by it as he published less and less over the years.

Antoine Abel became known to the public for his poetic works as well as for his short stories but he also published, folk tales, a comic strip and a treatise on traditional medicine.

(Source: French Wikipedia)

Selected publications

Works by Antoine Abel

Contes des Seychelles / Antoine Abel; Christian Vicini. - Paris : Clé international, 1981
Coco sec : récit / Antoine Abel. - Paris : Oswald, 1977
Contes et poèmes des Seychelles / Antoine Abel. - Paris : Oswald, 1977
Une tortue se rappelle! : récit / Antoine Abel. - Paris : Oswald, 1977

Publications about Seychelles literature and writers

Les écrivains seychellois : esquisse biographique / Abdourahamane Diallo. - Mahé, République des Seychelles : Département de la culture, 2019
Poezi : pri Antoine Abel 2014 - 2016 : Bann pti morso azoute mon lanfans. - Henriette Edwin. - [Seychelles] : Lenstit Kreol, [2019]
Sipay : revue seychelloise de poésie. - Victoria : [s.n.], 2009-
500 Nouveaux titres de littérature des Carai͏̈bes et de l'océan Indien 1991-1995 / Romuald-Blaise Fonkoua; Léon-François Hoffmann; Jean-Louis Joubert. - Paris : CLEF, 1997
2000 titres : littératures de l'océan Indien : Comores, Madagascar, Maurice, Réunion, Seychelles. - Monique Hugon; Claude Allibert. - Paris : Clef, 1994
Littératures de l'Océan Indien / Jean-Louis Joubert; Jean-Irénée Ramiandrasoa. - Vanves : EDICEF, 1991

Antoine Abel, l’accoucheur des Seychelles (02/06/2022, arte.tv)
Antoine Abel, der Vater der Seychellen-Literatur (02/06/2022, arte.tv)