Jerusalem
About This Novel
"Jesus Jerusalem" is the masterpiece of Mozambican writer Mia Cotto's novel. After the civil war in Mozambique, Sylvestre's wife died unexpectedly. In extreme grief, he moved his family to a remote place where wild beasts lived, named it "Jesus Salem", and waited there for God's apology. With him are the younger son Mwanito, the eldest son Ndonzi, the war-scarred veteran Zakaria, the connection with the outside world Aprosimado, and Sylvestre's sexual partner - a female mule named Zesbela. In order to completely erase the pain of losing his wife, Sylvesterer created another hell. Jerusalem is a place without past and future, a place that denies time and denies memory. People here learn to stop crying and praying, stay away from the river of time, and regard women and outsiders as enemies of the family. His brother Ndonji wanted to escape from his father's prison all his life. He secretly taught Mwanito how to regain his memory through literacy and writing. It wasn't until Martha, a white woman, broke into Jerusalem and revealed the true cause of her mother's death that Jerusalem finally began to fall apart. As Mia Kotto's most important work after "Sleepland", "Jesus Jerusalem" deeply depicts the intergenerational grief left by the war. The protagonist Mwanito finally reconstructs the family memory that his father refused to talk about through "writing" and makes a real voice of independence within the African continent. The publication of "Jesus Salem" fills a major gap in the translation of African Portuguese literature in China and gives readers an excellent opportunity to understand Africa and the diversity of Portuguese literature.
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Rating
Community(0)
