Customer Reviews

Under the Frangipani

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Under The Frangipani is a macabre murder mystery with a shadow of the fantastic, for the narrator is the murder victim - now a night spirit come back from the dead to possess the Mozambican police inspector investigating the crime! This story molds dreams, fables, allegory as well as troubled African history rife with Portuguese colonial ravages, civil war, and most recently, the depredations of Western materialism. Written to capture the spirit of post-independence Africa, Mia Couto's Under The Frangipani is a unique, page-turning tale meant to challenge preconceptions and embolden the spirit.

I am a fan of Mia Couto having read several of his books this is probably the easiest to get into. Set in a home for old people in revolutionary Mozambique it is a sort of murder mystery which forms a backdrop of the general condition of the world outside the home, the changing face of Africa, the hope and betrayal of the people by revolutionaries who fought in their name.

The book is touching and exposes the human trajedy of each of the residents of the home each who have a story to tell and each of whom are a victim in their own way of the changing world around them.

A beutiful peice of literature by a great African writer.

Long ago, whe history of humankind was just unravelling itself, kingdoms lived in peace...and as the history unraveled, kingdoms waged wars. Human and humane were on the verge of existence unnumerable times before... and finally it came to stagnation, mind you, stagnatin, not peace. And in the spirit of that stagnation, this book was born. Africa, the oldest continent, which lived as civilisation passed by, still, after blodshed of colonialism, lives... and it is not a life of beauty, but the life itself. You could call the storyline of the book irrelevant. You have to read it for the simplest of reasons... you will not catch that feeling of pure serenity nowhere else, you will not find it in here also, but even the glimpse will do to change your life forever.