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muga's review against another edition
3.0
We never really get to live during most of our life. We waste ourselves in a boundless lethargy that we delude and console ourselves by calling existen...
Eh I don't know about this one the writing was fine but the non-linear storytelling was too much for me also the way the white woman was described African women rubbed me the wrong way
There are no longer any savages, only natives. But natives can be beautiful. Above all, native women can be beautiful. And it is from that beauty that their bygone savagery emerges. It is a savage beauty. White men, in the past oppressors who were fearful of being devoured, nowadays want to be eaten, swallowed up by black beauty....
Like?
Eh I don't know about this one the writing was fine but the non-linear storytelling was too much for me also the way the white woman was described African women rubbed me the wrong way
There are no longer any savages, only natives. But natives can be beautiful. Above all, native women can be beautiful. And it is from that beauty that their bygone savagery emerges. It is a savage beauty. White men, in the past oppressors who were fearful of being devoured, nowadays want to be eaten, swallowed up by black beauty....
Like?
bibbo's review against another edition
3.0
Read for Tournament of Books. Some lovely passages, but just did not grab me. 3.0 rating
ruthiella's review against another edition
1.0
I don’t know if it was the fantastical elements such as a boy learning how to read and write with nothing more than a pack of playing cards and the labels on crates of weapons or the quasi-poetical language such as “We never really get to live during most of our life. We waste ourselves in a boundless lethargy that we delude and console ourselves by calling it existence.”, but this book made no sense to me. Plus, there total nonsense like, “This is what these black women have that we can never have: they are always their whole body. They live in every part of their body. Their whole body is woman, their time is feminine. While we white women live in a strange state of transhumance: sometimes we are soul other times we are body. We aspire to soar on the wings of desire, only to then crash to the ground under the weight of our guilt.” What? I am equally pissed off for all black and white women everywhere. It’s not you Mia Couto, it’s me.
tbrov's review against another edition
5.0
Weird, a bit difficult, but worth it. Closer to poetry than prose. It's a book of loss and mourning.
"Fury is just a different way of crying."
"At night, his tongue would unfold like a snake's. He would wake up with the taste of venom in his mouth, as if he'd been kissed by the devil. All because a soldier's slumber is a slow parade of the dead."
"Family, school, other people, they all elect some spark of promise in us, some area in which we may shine. Some are born to sing, others to dance, others are born merely to be someone else. I was born to keep quiet. My only vocation was silence. It was my father who explined this to me: I have an inclination to remain speechless, a talent for perfecting silences. I've written that deliberately, silences in the plural. Yes, because there isn't one sole silence. Every silence contains music in a state of gestation."
"Fury is just a different way of crying."
"At night, his tongue would unfold like a snake's. He would wake up with the taste of venom in his mouth, as if he'd been kissed by the devil. All because a soldier's slumber is a slow parade of the dead."
"Family, school, other people, they all elect some spark of promise in us, some area in which we may shine. Some are born to sing, others to dance, others are born merely to be someone else. I was born to keep quiet. My only vocation was silence. It was my father who explined this to me: I have an inclination to remain speechless, a talent for perfecting silences. I've written that deliberately, silences in the plural. Yes, because there isn't one sole silence. Every silence contains music in a state of gestation."