Palmares
A 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist. Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.
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A 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE
'A once-in-a-lifetime work of literature, the kind that changes your understanding of the world' Yara Rodriguez Fowler, Guardian
'Astonishingly rich in character and incident, filled with magic and mystery' Sunday Times
'Intricate, mesmerizing and endlessly inventive and subversive' Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
'A story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill', Robert Jones, Jr, author of The Prophets
AN EPIC TALE OF LOVE AND LIBERATION SET IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIAL BRAZIL
From plantation to plantation, Almeyda, a young slave girl, hears whispers, rumours of Palmares, a hidden settlement where fugitive slaves live free. But can this promised land exist? And what price is paid for 'freedom'?
In Palmares, Gayl Jones brings to life a world full of unforgettable characters, reimagining extraordinary historical events and combining them with mythology and magic. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter of a century. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, '[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.' Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones (Mosquito) reemerges after a 21-year hiatus with an epic and inventive saga that weaves together magic, mythology, and Portuguese colonial history. Eight-year-old Almeyda is enslaved on a 17th-century Brazilian plantation when her enslaver welcomes a man who seeks the blood of a Black virgin for a cure. While an herbal drink from her mother serves as protection, the price for it comes heavy as the mother is sold and separated from her. Later, as a young woman, Almeyda is rescued and taken to Palmares, a hidden settlement for freedom seekers. There, she is chosen by settlement member Anninho and the two are married. Soon after, Palmares is razed by Portuguese soldiers and its leader, King Zumbi, is killed. While in the soldiers' custody, Almeyda wakes to find her husband gone. Determined to reunite with him, Almeyda escapes again to journey through Brazil. She hears of a New Palmares and that Zumbi's spirit may still be alive, perhaps transformed into a bird, and apprentices with a medicine woman who knows Anninho and gives her a lead on his whereabouts. The magical elements are difficult to get an initial purchase on, as they aren't given much explanation, but Jones brings her established incisiveness and linguistic flair to the horrifyingly accurate portrayal of racial struggle. All in all, it's a triumphant return.
