Shadows of Your Black Memory
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€26.50
A01=Donato Ndongo
Author_Donato Ndongo
Category=FBA
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
Product details
- ISBN 9780974888125
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jan 2008
- Publisher: Swan Isle Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Set during the last years of Spanish rule in Equatorial Guinea, "Shadows of Your Black Memory" presents the voice of a young African man reflecting on his childhood. Through the idealistic eyes of the nameless protagonist, Donato Ngongo portrays the cultural conflicts between Africa and Spain, ancestral worship competing with Catholicism, and tradition giving way to modernity. The backdrop of a nation moving toward a troubled independence parallels the young man's internal struggle to define his own identity. In this bildungsroman, Ndongo masterfully exposes the cultural fissures of his native land. "Spanish Guinea" is a heated, sensual landscape with exotic animals and trees, ancient rituals, ghosts, saints, and sinners. We come to know the narrator's extended family, the people of his village, merchants, sorcerers, and Catholic priests; we see them critically at times, even humorously, yet always with compassion and a magical dignity. Michael Ugarte's sensitive translation captures the spirit of the original Spanish prose and makes Ndongo's powerful, gripping tale available to English-speaking readers for the first time.
Donato Ndongo is visiting scholar in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri - Columbia. He was born in Equatorial Guinea and has published novels, poetry, and essays on postcolonial Africa. Michael Ugarte is professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri - Columbia.
