Saudade
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A coming-of-age story set in Angola in the period leading up to the colony’s independence, Saudade focuses on a Goan immigrant family caught between complicity in Portuguese rule, and their dependence on the Angolans who are their servants. The title (saudade means ‘melancholy’ in Portuguese) speaks to the longing for homeland that haunts its characters, and especially the young girl who is the book’s protagonist and narrator.
Suneeta Peres da Costa’s novella captures with intense lyricism the difficult relationship between the daughter and her mother, and the ways in which their intimate world opens up questions about domestic violence, the legacies of Portuguese slavery, and the end of empire. The young woman’s intellectual awakening unfolds into a growing awareness of the lies of colonialism, and the violent political ruptures that ultimately lead to her father’s death, and their exile.
‘[Her] voice is unique: neither childlike nor grownup, but instead by turns gravely articulate, wildly poetic, and hilariously original…a haunting and magical vision of childhood.’ Austin Chronicle
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This elliptical, potent work from Peres da Costa (Homework) skips through the early years of a young woman of Goan parentage in Angola, remarking on her life and events there as seen through young eyes. The narrator only names herself toward the end of the work and gives no dates for events. That vagueness, combined with the brief chapters of single stream-of-consciousness paragraphs, give this volume a dreamlike quality. Young Maria-Cristina's voice changes only incrementally, so it's difficult to perceive the passage of time at first. She lives a rather privileged life, the daughter of two Brahmin caste parents, her father a lawyer, first in Benguela and later in the capital of Luanda. At first, she spends her days at home remarking on the activities of her mother and the two servants. These early vignettes are succeeded by reminiscences of schoolgirl life into which awareness of historical incidents only gradually enters a war in Kashmir, the assassination of Am lcar Cabral. This is the tale of a young life only begun, whose "destiny was unwritten" and who is yet "unscarred by history's vicissitudes." A familiarity with 1960s Angola will enhance a reader's appreciation of this work due to how limited the child's perspective is, but there is a certain universality to Maria-Cristina's youthful thoughts that makes this both moving and broadly accessible.
