My First Book in Portuguese!

Since several years I promised myself to finally advance my Portuguese, this year really happened. This time, I was not only watching some random movie or playing some random Duolingo or eventually advancing my pronunciation via Rosetta Stone, but I´ve succeed reading a book - with the help of a dictionary. 

My random choice - completely random, from a local library - was a very short book by a very prolific author and comedian, Ricardo Artur de Araújo Pereira featuring some random thoughts and anecdotic encounters happening during the pandemic. 

Ideias concretas sobre vagas - which I clumsily translate as Concrete ideas about job openings - is a collection of short chapters with or without a character, with a bit of humour, unequal in the degree of novelty. From my point of view, it was important to be able to read is step-by-step, trying to understand the context and sometimes translating word by word. 

One of the lessons learned from reading this book, from the perspective of language learning, was for the beginning - A2 to B1 - to rather focus on short stories, nonfiction, allowing to understand the short installments, instead of aspiring to read novels without properly following the plot. The relative success with this book encouraged me to continue with the reading, although I still have a lot to improve - the grammar, vocabulary and first and foremost the pronunciation - which right now is horrible, a combination of falsely accented Spanish and Italian intonation; but promise to improve it somehow...

In any case, I can only be proud of myself that this year, I finally kept my promises in terms of language improvement. With few more months from this year left, I can only wish myself to continue with my consistent progress. 

The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutra

 

The meeting between the colonizer and the colonized do have its own layer of humour. There is that encounter mediated by the lack of communication, different cultural codes, mistranslations that indulge hilarity. That´s what usually help the colonized to survive day after day the pressure of the coloniter.

The Ultimate Strategy - I didn´t research, but maybe the title is inspired by this quote by MLK Jr. : The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence - by Abdulai Sila, the creator of the modern novel in Guinea Bissau, translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutra portrays the white man lost in its own endeavours, facing an increasing opposition from the local population, itself undergoing a dramatic shift at the level of mentalities and daily practices. Various Christian denominations - as Scolastique Mukasonga already wrote about it - in the case of the Portuguese colonies, the Catholic Church - did play an important role in performing the most important part of the colonisation, with effects visible until today.

Guinea Bissau gained independence from Portugal in 1973. The story is centered during the last decade before the independence. Ndani is the constant character of the story. She is first a housegirl that is brought to the church and ´emancipated´ by the illiterate wife of an equally illiterate colonizer, afterwards a Regulo´s - chiefdom - wife and finally the wife of The Teacher, a brave defier of the colonial balance of power. From one stage to another she is reflecting the changes taking place slowly within different levels of the society.

The social and political development plays definitely an important role in the story and builds up a special dynamic. However, the story line is sometimes getting lost and the intertwinned stories are missing some points or not necessarily connecting.

I was very happy to discover this important novel for the literary history of Guinea Bissau and I am looking forward to read more literary testimonies from the former lusophone realm. There is so much to discover.

Rating: 3 stars