The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami is another fantastic work of fiction. Like almost all good works of historical fiction, it is grounded in actual events: In 1527 the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition set off for America - and Florida, specifically - to be beset by every trouble that could plague a sixteenth centruy explorer. Narváez, in fact, was carried out to sea on a raft and never seen or heard of again. Four men (of the six hundred or so who set off for the new world) did survive: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and his Moroccan slave, Estebanico.
Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain achieved great fame with his account of their journeys through the New World. The Moor's Account is Lalami's telling of this same story, from the perspective of Estebanico (who began life as Mustafa al-Zamori). In that way, this is Mustafa-Estabanico's memoir, and Lalami does the story justice. The voyage to America, foundering of the explorers' party, and life among the natives, are interwoven with the story of Mustafa, from his birth to the day he became a slave, and then his initial years in slavery, which were spent in Spain.
The story is well researched and Mustafa's background story is beautifully created. Lalami writes things like, "...I had seen wonders that no other Zamori had. .... The world was not as I wished it to be, but I was alive. I was alive." that make me want to fall into the pages and read forever.
No surprises then: I enjoyed this tremendously. I enjoyed it all the more for having recently read A Splendid Exchange, which discussed both the Spanish and Portuguese presence in North Africa (fittingly, Mustafa is a trader), as well as the exploration of the Americas. In the end, this is all about the prose, though, for it is page-after-page of a beautifully imagined and marvelously written story.
No comments:
Post a Comment