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A review by blueyorkie
The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa
5.0
Sometimes, on the literary road, we encounter surprising stories, a style, subjects, and poetry that touch us without knowing why. For example, we cannot explain some romances; once the reading ends, we ask ourselves questions about what happened.
That's what happened to me with the merchant of the past. Reading the back cover, I expected anything but that.
The narrator, a gecko who was once a man, like Scheherazade, tells us about the life that passes in the house he has chosen, that of Félix Ventura. Through concise chapters that may seem disjointed between dream and reality, the reader is almost hypnotized by the story.
The strength of José Eduardo Agualusa's novel is not in the story's plot, which is very inconsistent in itself. However, the questions it suggests are about the weight of the past, one's pride, each person's history, the lie, the truncated reality, and the memoir solidities.
Along the way, we will reveal some snippets of Angola's history in the background. Poetic writing is a dreamlike story tinged with a fantasy that we hesitate to qualify as soft or violent—a bizarre reading.
That's what happened to me with the merchant of the past. Reading the back cover, I expected anything but that.
The narrator, a gecko who was once a man, like Scheherazade, tells us about the life that passes in the house he has chosen, that of Félix Ventura. Through concise chapters that may seem disjointed between dream and reality, the reader is almost hypnotized by the story.
The strength of José Eduardo Agualusa's novel is not in the story's plot, which is very inconsistent in itself. However, the questions it suggests are about the weight of the past, one's pride, each person's history, the lie, the truncated reality, and the memoir solidities.
Along the way, we will reveal some snippets of Angola's history in the background. Poetic writing is a dreamlike story tinged with a fantasy that we hesitate to qualify as soft or violent—a bizarre reading.