The Tropical Imaginary of Corinne Morel Darleux
12 February 2026
Committed writer and eco-socialist activist Corinne Morel Darleux undertook a residency at the Vagamon Writers’ Retreat as part of the Villa Swagatam. Immersed in the mist-covered landscapes of Kerala, among the monsoon, dense forests, and long conversations around ecological and political imaginaries, she began writing a new novel: Chimères tropicales. Completed after the residency, the book was published by Éditions Dalva in January 2026.
Carried by a language that is at once poetic and political, Chimères tropicales explores the fault lines between the living world, imagination, and contemporary upheavals. Traversed by themes of exile, intimate forms of resistance, and the fragile ties we create in order to remain standing, the novel examines what climatic, emotional, and social shocks reveal about us. Labyrinthine and sensory, the text weaves together fragments, cultural references, and hallucinatory visions in a form where the lushness of the tropical world itself becomes literary material.
During her residency, Corinne Morel Darleux also participated in a panel discussion on “Eco-socialism and Prose” at the Kerala Literature Festival. It was above all the immersive work, the slow maturation of the manuscript, and the sensory experience of Kerala that defined her time in India.
In a review published in En Attendant Nadeau on 20 January 2026, literary critic Sébastien Omont described the novel as “a fiction about fiction, a maelstrom of fragments that make up existence,” adding that the result feels “as though Diderot were collaborating with Ursula K. Le Guin.” He also praised Corinne Morel Darleux’s ability to “sublimate the tragic nature of the tropics without falsifying it or laying claim to it.”
« Tout n’est qu’illusion d’optique. Des chenilles urticantes se parent de couleurs magnifiques, les phasmes prennent l’apparence de bouts de bois, les plus belles baies sont toxiques. À chaque pluie, des sangsues voraces apparaissent par milliers. Des serpents se tapissent sous les rochers ou à l’affût sur une branche, prêts à se laisser chuter ; tout semble guetter sa proie. Tout est venin, crocs, frôlements, ventouses et sucements ; l’esprit s’égare et chavire ; la forêt appelle la folie et le sang. »
