Nilima Rao is a Fijian Indian Australian writer.

Her first book, A Disappearance in Fiji (2023), won the 2024 ALA Reading Award for Mystery Fiction; was one of Booklist’s Top 10 Debut Mysteries and Thrillers in 2024; Amazon Top 20 Debut in 2023; and Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine’s 2023 Best Debut Winner of the Year.

Her second book featuring Akal Singh, A Shipwreck in Fiji, was published in 2025. She is working on her third book in the series.

Talking About Books asked Nilima about her writing on Fiji and how she finds stories from the past.

TAB: Your books are set in Fiji at the beginning of the 20th century. Why did you choose this period?

NR: A Disappearance in Fiji is set in colonial Fiji in 1914. Fiji was a recent colony in the British empire, having ceded sovereignty in 1874. In the early 1900s, the British were taking Indians to Fiji by the shipload as cheap labour for the cane fields, under exploitative indentured servitude contracts.

It was a time of great societal change in the country, which made it a really interesting setting. For the Indians coming to Fiji, they were initially trying to survive their contracts, then trying to make a new life in a country which didn’t always seem to want them.

The indigenous Fijians were coming to terms with the loss of sovereignty and the influx of a large number of Indians into their country, something they hadn’t anticipated when becoming a colony.

TAB: Why did you use the genre of crime to highlight this period?

NR: I wanted to write something I would read, so that was either fantasy or crime—and I couldn’t figure out how to get dragons into Fiji! Crime novels lend themselves to examining the breadth of a society, as a detective ventures through different classes and environments to investigate the crime.

For Australians, Fiji is largely known as a tourist destination, a tropical paradise. My goal was to write a novel that a tourist could read on a beach, enjoy the story and learn about the slightly darker history of the country they were visiting.

TAB: I was surprised to find a Sikh police officer as part of the force in East Asia. Can you tell us a little more about the role Sikh officers played during this period? Why did you choose to make Akal Singh the protagonist?

NR: My initial plan for writing the first book was a dual chronology with a young Indian indentured servant girl as the investigator in the historical part of the story. I quickly realized that this young girl had no agency to investigate, and I wasn’t really getting anywhere.

I was in Fiji at the time, doing really broad research, and I came across an article in a newspaper of the time, discussing the success being enjoyed by the Sikh police officers who had come from Hong Kong. I dug into this and found that 10 Sikh officers had been sent by the governor of Hong Kong, who happened to be a former governor of Fiji, to help bolster the fledgling police force in Fiji. I had found my protagonist, and I wrote the first 3,000 words with Akal as the protagonist the same afternoon.

TAB: Your first book, A Disappearance in Fiji, is about a missing woman, an indentured labourer on a sugarcane plantation. You have said you have a personal connection with this story. Could you tell us more about this?

NR: My great-grandparents went to Fiji under the indentured servitude program. It’s something I really didn’t know much about growing up. We moved to Australia when I was three, to north Queensland, where there weren’t too many other Fijian Indians. I grew up really distanced from my cultural heritage. But on a trip to India in my 20s, after witnessing the depth and breadth of poverty there, I became intrigued about how my distant ancestors (I didn’t even know how distant) escaped that cycle of poverty. That inspired me to research the topic, and that led to three novels.

In terms of the woman who went missing, this isn’t a story particular to my family but is one that I came across a few times in my research, documented in a song called Kunti’s Lament. The song tells the story of Kunti, who was being sexually assaulted by an overseer and jumped in the river to escape from him. I named the missing woman in A Disappearance in Fiji Kunti as a homage.  

TAB: A Shipwreck in Fiji is about the Indian labourers who decided to stay in Fiji, the tensions between Taviti and his uncle—who is the chief of the village—and a group of shipwrecked European sailors. What sparked the idea for this book?

NR: The three books are based on the three different stages of the journey of the Indian indentured labourers. A Disappearance in Fiji was set on the plantation, focused on Indians under contract. A Shipwreck in Fiji is focused on Indians who have completed their indenture and are now living free in the colony, and their challenges with things like educating their children. So I knew that major theme going in.

I also thought that, while the experience of the Indians was my focus, I couldn’t write a book about Fiji and about colonialism without talking about the experience of the indigenous Fijians, the iTaukei people, so I knew that I wanted to feature Taviti’s family, their home and some of their cultural practices.

Another piece of the puzzle was the setting of Levuka, the historical capital of Fiji. I visited the town when I was doing my initial research in 2016 and fell in love with it. It’s a sleepy port town, steeped in history and full of fascinating stories. I knew I wanted to set a story there.

I had read about a German privateer who was captured near Levuka during WW1. He was an aristocrat with such an adventurous story that a German television series was made about him. This inspired the shipwrecked Europeans in the story.

Once I had all of these components in my mind, a narrative emerged.

TAB: You create a strong sense of place and time. How did you find so much detail about the period?

NR: Lots of research! I spent two months in Fiji in 2016, immersing myself in a variety of different locations and aspects of the culture. In terms of the urban landscapes, I could find some photographs of the time. For the natural environment, I relied on my own experience of the landscapes of contemporary Fiji.

For the attitudes and smaller topics of interest of the time, my best resource was the Fiji Times. It gave me a sense of how Europeans were speaking and what issues they were focused on. But for the Indians, there was very little in the way of written records. Most of the people who went were illiterate, and I couldn’t find journals and letters from the perspective of the Indians. I found some first-person narratives, and filled in the gaps with my imagination, as historical fiction writers do.

TAB: Every chapter starts with a snippet from the Fiji Times. Did these pieces help you put the story together or did you choose them once you had written the chapter? How did you select these particular extracts?

NR: I loved reading the Fiji Times of that period. It was such an insight into the society. Reading these articles did inspire characters and aspects of plot. For example, in the third book, A Farewell to Fiji, which is due out mid-2027, the Walu Bay land reclamation is the scene of a crime. This was a public works project which I became aware of because it was frequently mentioned in the newspaper due to the number of industrial accidents that occurred there.

For the specific extracts for each chapter, I would take photos of the articles I found interesting, and then after the story was written, I would select the articles that seemed to match something in the chapter.

TAB: You call yourself “culturally confused”. How does this affect your sense of home? How has it affected your writing?

NR: I started this project with a very academic mindset, and with a goal around informing others about this history. What I didn’t anticipate is the impact it would have on my sense of self and my grounding in my cultural identity. Learning more about this history, connecting with other people who care about this topic, even the act of talking to other Pacific people, has made me feel more connected with my identity as a Fijian, an Indian, and oddly, even as an Australian. I would say I am now less confused than when I started—still confused though!

TAB: When did you start writing? Is it something you have always done?

NR: I loved writing and storytelling as a kid, but stopped creative writing when I went to university and started my IT career. When my career was established, I started doing writing courses to rediscover this creative outlet, writing mostly short stories. The idea of writing about the history of Indians in Fiji motivated me to commit to longer form fiction. I started researching in 2016, really got stuck into writing in 2017 and the first book was released in 2023.

TAB: Thank you for sharing the history of Fiji with us. I’m looking forward to your new book!

Read my review of A Disappearance in Fiji.

Go to Nilima Rao’s website.