Is it fair to downgrade this book because it’s hard to read? And by which I mean, the plot tears at your heart and makes you furious at times. I guess maybe not, but that is what I feel and so that is how I will rate this.
Fair trigger warnings: this book has anything and everything you’d expect to see in a “faithful and true” recounting of Spanish conquistadors lathing their way through La Florida–there’s sexual assault, slavery, cannibalism, emaciation, the whole kit and caboodle.
I can’t even recall how I picked this up–I feel like it was off of a list, and I definitely checked it out and then returned it at least twice before finally cracking on and reading it in full pretty much in an unbroken stretch. I have a particular vague but strong pull towards Moorish anything, mainly driven by my love of the architecture and the artistry you see in the southern bits of Portugal/Spain. This marks the first time I’ve taken that sentiment and explored it in any depth, and this fictionalized tale (woven wholesale out of a single line mentioning the presence of an enslaved man from Azemmour, Morocco on a Spanish colonial mission) is probably the best sort of entry.
oh the hubris! The utter unmitigated gall of Europeans to arrive at the shores of lands new to them and think, yes, we’re in charge of this. I’m not attempting to do a rose-y tinted “noble savages” thing, but the most frustrating bits of all of these narratives is watching a functioning, symbiotic society come face to face with gunpowder and germs and just…collapse, time and time again, or eke out tiny victories that you know don’t go anywhere because you live in the modern world and you know the ending.
But you know, setting that aside this is a great work of historical fiction, and unlike The Vaster Wilds I didn’t spend the entire thing feeling like I was watching someone waste away in novel gruesome ways. Even though that is a lot of what happens, don’t get me wrong! Mustafa, our protagonist, is a flawed man who voluntarily sells himself into slavery to help feed his family during a two-year famine in Morocco exacerbated by a Portuguese blockade. Eventually sold into the service of an enterprising captain set to sail to the New World, we’re reading his memoirs, written as a measure of both penance for the trauma he has inflicted on those he passed (justified, as always, step by step) and of…pride? A similar notion to his owners, to stamp his mark on the lands he passed which otherwise would have passed him by.
Did I want to read more of this world? No! and also…yes? Hence, three stars. Maybe I will increase after some reflection.