The Moor's Account
(Sprache: Englisch)
A New York Times Notable Book
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of the Year
An NPR Great Read of 2014
A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of the Year
In these pages, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America: Mustafa...
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of the Year
An NPR Great Read of 2014
A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of the Year
In these pages, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America: Mustafa...
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A New York Times Notable BookA Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of the Year
An NPR Great Read of 2014
A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of the Year
In these pages, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America: Mustafa al-Zamori, called Estebanico. The slave of a Spanish conquistador, Estebanico sails for the Americas with his master, Dorantes, as part of a danger-laden expedition to Florida. Within a year, Estebanico is one of only four crew members to survive.
As he journeys across America with his Spanish companions, the Old World roles of slave and master fall away, and Estebanico remakes himself as an equal, a healer, and a remarkable storyteller. His tale illuminates the ways in which our narratives can transmigrate into history-and how storytelling can offer a chance at redemption and survival.
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8.The Story of Seville
All around me, voices rose and fell. Shackled slaves spoke in an overlapping multitude of languages, this one asking after an uncle, this other comforting a child, and yet these others arguing about a piece of moldy bread, their cries periodically interrupted by the bleating of goats from the animal stalls. But for a long time, I kept to my silence, wrapping myself in it like an old, comfortable cloak. I think I was still trying to apprehend the consequences of what I had done. For hours on end, I revisited the long sequence of events that had led me from the soft divans and rhythmic guenbris of my graduation feast to the timber bench and jangling chains of the caravel Jacinta, sailing with frightening speed toward the city of Seville. I had played my part in these events I had made my decisions freely and independently at each juncture, and yet I was stunned by the turn my life had taken. The elders teach us: give glory to God, who can alter all fates. One day you could be selling slaves, the next you could be sold as a slave.
The hunger I had felt so keenly in Azemmur was tamed now, if not satisfied, by the hard bread the sailors distributed once a day, though it was quickly replaced by a renewed acquaintance with all of my body s other senses and needs. My head itched from the lice my neighbor, an old man with pockmarks dotting his face, had given me. My soiled clothes stuck to my skin, because I could not bring myself to use, on command and with little notice, the bucket that was passed up and down the gallery twice a day. My limbs grew stiff from sitting in damp and narrow quarters. My throat hurt, my feet swelled, my wrists bled. Above all, my heart ached with longing for my family.
My family. They had, all of them, learned to accept their fates. Without complaint my sister had spent her girlhood watching over our twin brothers, and without protest she had returned home
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after her divorce. My brothers went to school every day hoping to fulfill my father s dreams, dreams I had cruelly broken and then bequeathed to them. My mother had left her beloved people and her distinguished hometown in order to follow my father to Azemmur.
As for me, I had made a habit of defying my fate. Perhaps I could do that now and find a way back to my old life. I thought of the elder al-Dib, my employer in Azemmur, who had been born to a slavewoman, but had earned his freedom as a youth. Perhaps I could do the same. Perhaps my talent would be recognized by my master, who would let me purchase my freedom; or perhaps my misery would touch the heart of an Andalusian Muslim, who would free me from bondage in order to earn the favor of our Lord. To overcome my fear, I shackled myself with hope, its links heavier than any metal known to man.
Having convinced myself that my condition was temporary, I set about trying to survive it. I taught myself to ignore the stench of excretions, the moans of delirium, the sight of private parts. I learned to push back into my throat the rising taste of vomit. I tried to watch out for the rats. I slept only when my exhaustion overpowered my discomfort. And I passed the time by listening to the stories the women told their children, after the guards had left and the doors were locked for the night. In the darkness of the lower deck, the women brought to life a world entire, a world where sly girls outwitted hungry ghouls and where simple cobblers saved powerful sultans, so that at times it seemed to me I could see the ghouls sharp teeth or the sultan s embroidered slippers.
Then, early one morning, the anchor was dropped, its tug faintly resonating through the varnished wood under my feet. I listened to the footsteps on the upper deck. Did the customs officer come aboard to greet the captain? Was that the stevedore inquiring about the mer
As for me, I had made a habit of defying my fate. Perhaps I could do that now and find a way back to my old life. I thought of the elder al-Dib, my employer in Azemmur, who had been born to a slavewoman, but had earned his freedom as a youth. Perhaps I could do the same. Perhaps my talent would be recognized by my master, who would let me purchase my freedom; or perhaps my misery would touch the heart of an Andalusian Muslim, who would free me from bondage in order to earn the favor of our Lord. To overcome my fear, I shackled myself with hope, its links heavier than any metal known to man.
Having convinced myself that my condition was temporary, I set about trying to survive it. I taught myself to ignore the stench of excretions, the moans of delirium, the sight of private parts. I learned to push back into my throat the rising taste of vomit. I tried to watch out for the rats. I slept only when my exhaustion overpowered my discomfort. And I passed the time by listening to the stories the women told their children, after the guards had left and the doors were locked for the night. In the darkness of the lower deck, the women brought to life a world entire, a world where sly girls outwitted hungry ghouls and where simple cobblers saved powerful sultans, so that at times it seemed to me I could see the ghouls sharp teeth or the sultan s embroidered slippers.
Then, early one morning, the anchor was dropped, its tug faintly resonating through the varnished wood under my feet. I listened to the footsteps on the upper deck. Did the customs officer come aboard to greet the captain? Was that the stevedore inquiring about the mer
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Autoren-Porträt von Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is the author of the short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and the novel Secret Son, which was on the Orange Prize long list. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and in many anthologies. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Lannan Residency Fellowship and is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.www.lailalalami.com
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Laila Lalami
- 2015, 336 Seiten, Maße: 20,3 x 12,9 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: VINTAGE
- ISBN-10: 0804170622
- ISBN-13: 9780804170628
- Erscheinungsdatum: 07.08.2015
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book MAN BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of the Year An NPR Great Read of the Year A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of the YearAn exciting tale of wild hopes, divided loyalties, and highly precarious fortunes. The New Yorker
An absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth. Salman Rushdie
Stunning. . . . The Moor s Account sheds light on all of the possible the New World exploration stories that didn t make history. Huffington Post
Lalami has once again shown why she is one of her generation s most gifted writers. Reza Aslan, author of Zealot
Compelling. . . . Necessary. . . . Laila Lalami s mesmerizing The Moor s Account presents us a historical fiction that feels something like a plural totality . . . a narrative that braids points of view so intricately that they become one even as we re constantly reminded of the separate and often contrary strands that render the whole. The Los Angeles Review of Books
Richly rewarding. NPR
A bold and exhilarating bid to give a real-life figure muzzled by history the chance to have his say in fiction. San Francisco Chronicle
[A] rich novel based on an actual, ill-fated 16th century Spanish expedition to Florida. . . . Offers a pungent alternative history that muses on the ambiguous power of words to either tell the truth or reshape it according to our desires. Los Angeles Times
Estebanico is a superb storyteller, capable of sensitive character appraisals and penetrating ethnographic detail. The Wall Street Journal
Feels at once historical and contemporary. . . . For Lalami,
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storytelling is a primal struggle over power between the strong and the weak, between good and evil, and against forgetting. . . . Lalami sees the story [of Estebanico] as a form of moral and spiritual instruction that can lead to transcendence. The New York Times Book Review
Meticulously researched and inventive. . . . Those interested in the history of the Spanish colonization of the Americas will find much to like in The Moor s Account, as will lovers of good yarns of faraway lands and times. The Seattle Times
Excellent historical fiction. . . . The way the Moor s account differs from the Spaniards is amazing. It s a play on perspective in more ways than one. Ebony
Artfully conveys the politics and power dynamics of bondage. . . . Eloquently examines the subjectivity of narrative and the creation and manipulation of the truth. . . . With this magnificent novel, Lalami, through fiction, has penned a revelation and tribute to truth. The Millions
Tremendous and powerful, The Moor s Account is one of the finest historical novels I ve encountered in a while. It rings with thunder! Gary Shteyngart
Laila Lalami s radiant, arrestingly vivid prose instantly draws us into the world of the first black slave in the New World whose name we know Estebanico. A bravura performance of imagination and empathy, The Moor s Account reverberates long after the final page. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Meticulously researched and inventive. . . . Those interested in the history of the Spanish colonization of the Americas will find much to like in The Moor s Account, as will lovers of good yarns of faraway lands and times. The Seattle Times
Excellent historical fiction. . . . The way the Moor s account differs from the Spaniards is amazing. It s a play on perspective in more ways than one. Ebony
Artfully conveys the politics and power dynamics of bondage. . . . Eloquently examines the subjectivity of narrative and the creation and manipulation of the truth. . . . With this magnificent novel, Lalami, through fiction, has penned a revelation and tribute to truth. The Millions
Tremendous and powerful, The Moor s Account is one of the finest historical novels I ve encountered in a while. It rings with thunder! Gary Shteyngart
Laila Lalami s radiant, arrestingly vivid prose instantly draws us into the world of the first black slave in the New World whose name we know Estebanico. A bravura performance of imagination and empathy, The Moor s Account reverberates long after the final page. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
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