The Word Tree (Dedalus Africa)

I'm sorry to see that this lovely book has only 14 copies on LT. In three very different sections, it tells the story of a young woman in Mozambique. In Part One we see her as a young child. The style of this section is lush, colourful, with a tinge of magical realism. The girl is very close to her father, who loves life in Mozambique - much less close to her mother, who spends most of her time policing young Gita's life to make sure she doesn't pick up too many habits from the 'natives'. Given that, Part Two is very unexpected - we are suddenly with the mother's story, and how she came to emigrate from Portugal to Mozambique - and so we come to understand the roots of her bitterness and resentment. In Part Three, we are back with Gita, show more now a young woman, and forced to make a difficult decision about where she belongs.

We will walk down the streets, which we know by heart. In a way, they are inside us, like lines engraved on the palms of our hands. Some are parallel, perpendicular, geometric, while others follow their own course, like the paths carved out by wind or water. The city is a living, breathing body, mine, yours, other people’s, the world’s; it’s an endless intersecting of bodies, caught in the uncountable moments of time, repeated over and over like the waves of the sea. show less

Gita grows up in colonial Mozambique with her beloved father, Laureano, and her distant mother, Amélia, who left Portugal dreaming of wealth and can't stop resenting not being part of the upper echelons of white Mozambique society. Gersão's story, told from different viewpoints, beautifully (and terribly) describes the varying ideas and ideals that exist in this world, contrasting white and black society, poor and rich, and young and old. As usual when it comes to any literature she touches, Margaret Jull Costa's translation is flawless.