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Review
"'This is an original and fresh tale quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa. I enjoyed it very much' Doris Lessing 'Mia Couto is a white man with an African soul' Henning Mankell 'Couto is the most prominent of the younger generation of writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa. Couto passionately and sensitively describes everyday life in poverty-stricken Mozambique' Guardian 'To read Mia Couto is to encounter a peculiarily African sensibility, a writer of fluid, fragmentary narratives... a remarkable novel' New Statesman 'A powerful and trenchant evocation of life in a society traumatised by decades of war and poverty' New Internationalist"
Product Description
A police inspector is investigating a strange murder, a case in which all the suspects are eager to claim responsibility for the act. Set in a former Portuguese fort which stored slaves and ivory, Under the Frangipani combines fable and allegory, dreams and myths with an earthy humour. The dead meet the living, language is invented, reality is constantly changing. In a story which is partly a thriller, partly an exploration of language itself, Mia Couto surprises and delights, and shows just why he is one of the most important African writers of today.
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I am the dead man. Read the first page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I am the dead man. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ermelindo Mucanga - a man who fixes things, a carpenter - has been dead for years; pretty much the same number of years that Mozambique has been independent. The problem is he, like the pre-colonial and post-colonial past, has not been buried properly, for things must be honoured, unpicked and folded the right way. As a result, the dead man crossed over into death with fists clenched "summoning curses upon the living." However, he is about to have a second chance at life, at campaigning for respect for history, because the frangipani by which he was buried lies a few metres from a former colonial fort, São Nicolau, turned refuge-for-old-folk, where the director (Vastsome Excellency, a mulatto) has just been murdered. The police inspector coming to investigate, Izidine Naìta, is marked for death and Ermelindo's halakavuma, assures him that he can inhabit the man's body.
This is how Mia Couto sets the scene for what is a masterpiece of invention, allegory, satire and language (which naturally means that the translator, David Brookshaw, must be commended too). Under the Frangipani is the story of a travesty for which nobody and everybody is responsible - not unlike Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, where everyone is responsible for not warning the murder victim. It is an exploration of the history of the independence struggle, the assault of modernity on the values of the past, the intricacies of a coup d'état plot and a paean to a country that is broken but still beautiful, because she "sleeps unclothed" to "absorb the secret energies of the earth."
In the end, Under the Frangipani is part-entertainment, part-social history - by choosing to allow a cast of characters with names like Little Miss No, Old Gaffer and Domingos Mourão to confess to the murder of Vastsome, Couto also gives them the platform to furnish us with their own little histories of Mozambique, thus enriching the plot with texture and heritage. As a bonus, Couto's style is poetic, disarmingly honest and succinct and he switches perspectives almost effortlessly. The result is a delightful read, and right to the last word it is never predictable. I rarely give five stars, but this book is a small treasure (only 150 pages) and so is Mia Couto.
This is how Mia Couto sets the scene for what is a masterpiece of invention, allegory, satire and language (which naturally means that the translator, David Brookshaw, must be commended too). Under the Frangipani is the story of a travesty for which nobody and everybody is responsible - not unlike Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, where everyone is responsible for not warning the murder victim. It is an exploration of the history of the independence struggle, the assault of modernity on the values of the past, the intricacies of a coup d'état plot and a paean to a country that is broken but still beautiful, because she "sleeps unclothed" to "absorb the secret energies of the earth."
In the end, Under the Frangipani is part-entertainment, part-social history - by choosing to allow a cast of characters with names like Little Miss No, Old Gaffer and Domingos Mourão to confess to the murder of Vastsome, Couto also gives them the platform to furnish us with their own little histories of Mozambique, thus enriching the plot with texture and heritage. As a bonus, Couto's style is poetic, disarmingly honest and succinct and he switches perspectives almost effortlessly. The result is a delightful read, and right to the last word it is never predictable. I rarely give five stars, but this book is a small treasure (only 150 pages) and so is Mia Couto.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Written to capture the spirit of post-independence Africa
18 Sep 2001
Format:Paperback
Under The Frangipani is a macabre murder mystery with a shadow of the fantastic, for the narrator is the murder victim - now a night spirit come back from the dead to possess the Mozambican police inspector investigating the crime! This story molds dreams, fables, allegory as well as troubled African history rife with Portuguese colonial ravages, civil war, and most recently, the depredations of Western materialism. Written to capture the spirit of post-independence Africa, Mia Couto's Under The Frangipani is a unique, page-turning tale meant to challenge preconceptions and embolden the spirit.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Beautiful and well written
1 July 2007
Format:Paperback
I am a fan of Mia Couto having read several of his books this is probably the easiest to get into. Set in a home for old people in revolutionary Mozambique it is a sort of murder mystery which forms a backdrop of the general condition of the world outside the home, the changing face of Africa, the hope and betrayal of the people by revolutionaries who fought in their name.
The book is touching and exposes the human trajedy of each of the residents of the home each who have a story to tell and each of whom are a victim in their own way of the changing world around them.
A beutiful peice of literature by a great African writer.
The book is touching and exposes the human trajedy of each of the residents of the home each who have a story to tell and each of whom are a victim in their own way of the changing world around them.
A beutiful peice of literature by a great African writer.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
struggle
2 Sep 2004
Format:Paperback
Long ago, whe history of humankind was just unravelling itself, kingdoms lived in peace...and as the history unraveled, kingdoms waged wars. Human and humane were on the verge of existence unnumerable times before... and finally it came to stagnation, mind you, stagnatin, not peace. And in the spirit of that stagnation, this book was born. Africa, the oldest continent, which lived as civilisation passed by, still, after blodshed of colonialism, lives... and it is not a life of beauty, but the life itself. You could call the storyline of the book irrelevant. You have to read it for the simplest of reasons... you will not catch that feeling of pure serenity nowhere else, you will not find it in here also, but even the glimpse will do to change your life forever.
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