Novel
Andanças de um Timorense
Not translated into English
Ponte Pedrinha · 1998
Synopsis
After a night of anguished writing, a young Timorese man finishes his first tale, that of a “Timorese without a town”. The novel then goes back over his story: his parents, Kotená and Kêti-Kia, refused the custom of Ataúro that handed the bride over, on the wedding night, to an uncle of the groom, and the child, Samuel, was separated from them when very small. Taken to Darwin to escape the violence, brought up by a priest and then in Portugal in a fervent Catholic faith, he becomes a writer and prepares for the mission in Africa.
Context
Published in Lisbon in 1998 by Edições Colibri, with a preface by the Mozambican poet José Craveirinha, who judges it “fragile and modest but unquestionably sincere”, the book followed Luís Cardoso's by a year. Isabel Moutinho notes in it the guilt of the exile, his silence before the tragic history of his people, religious fervour and the role of the Church as a refuge, as well as the place of Tetum in the liturgy, and judges that the author is still seeking an assured novelistic voice.
Who it is for
For discovering one of the first Timorese novels, the story of a Catholic exile between Australia and Portugal.
Prizes and reception
Craveirinha hails in it the strength of a lived and sincere word and hears in it talk of an “authentic homeland”.
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