Under the Frangipani in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 24, 2015 Bogdan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hic-sunt-leones

For me, literally speaking, Africa is one of the continents with the most white spots. I mean I have read the fewest writers from Africa, compared with other continents. Thus, when I found out about Mia Cuoto (via the Neustadt prize), and I have found that one of his novels is translated into Romanian, I jumped on it.

So I know very little about it at the moment I started this novel, except the blurp from the cover. The editor said something about a false detective story with a lot of influences For me, literally speaking, Africa is one of the continents with the most white spots. I mean I have read the fewest writers from Africa, compared with other continents. Thus, when I found out about Mia Cuoto (via the Neustadt prize), and I have found that one of his novels is translated into Romanian, I jumped on it.

So I know very little about it at the moment I started this novel, except the blurp from the cover. The editor said something about a false detective story with a lot of influences from African tradition, like legends, fantastic creatures or popular wisdom. It has all these elements in it but it is interestingly weird, a kind of weird that in the end makes sense. I figured out that the message Mia Cuoto wanted to transmit was that of a country (Mozambique) and its people that lost thier identity, due to century old colonianism and interminable civil war after independence. I checked out a little bit the history of Mozambique and the historical premises are there. I can only consider the message to be true, at least for some part of Mozambique society, so I'll give it a 5 for premise.

Regarding the form, I must first by stating that this is not a convetional novel. Also it is not easily (for me at least) classificable to a certain genre (in order to compare with others). In terms of what it is, from form perspective, it is a novel with a lot of fantastic and traditions from Mozambique. But it is obvious that it is not written by an uneducated elder from an African tribe. All those traditions and fantastic elements are embeded in a literary form by a skilled writer that knows the Occidental literary tradition. Due to this, as I am not a fan of excessive fantastic elements in nove, I'll give it a 4 for form.

In terms of originality, I found very few things that are more original that this novel (to me). Take a false detective story and add up a lot of African traditions and some fantastic elements that are endemic to the region and you end up with something trully original for most Europeans. Then I will give it a 5 for the level of originality.

On the characters, altough there are many of them and they are having several bizzare features, I was not too fond of any of them. I feel Mia Cuoto did not wanted to emphasize too much on characters. This is the reasons why I will give it a 3 for characters.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, as it is not a traditional novel, with many African traditional and fantastical elements embedded, it pose a little bit of difficulty for the average reader. I am not excepmted as well, so that's why I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, with so many fantastical beings and myths, I can hardly say the story is credible. Like reincarnation for the main character that was dead many years before the story started. Thus my rating for credibility is 1.

The last criteria is edition. I think it was hard to do the translation in a different culture like Romanian versus original African/Portuguese, and it was a good result. I also liked the cover and the quality of the paper. So as it is a nice edition, I'll give it a 4.

To summarize, I think this was just a glimpse in that part of Africa, but I really liked it. It does not explain all the differences between East Africa and Western society. All in all, my final rating for it is 3.42, which I will round it to 3 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 3.42 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+