REVIEWS OF THE MATATA BOOKS
Braz adds a uniquely Goan point of view to a story that is similar to my own. He was born in Kenya, so was I. He went to school there but went to Goa for some of his schooling. I went to England for a fair chunk of mine. There are many similarities. However, I was born into a privileged, white society that imposed a distinct racial segregation in Kenya (and other parts of the Empire/Commonwealth). Braz provides another perspective into that racially divided society. The books are very well worth reading. I recommend them to you all.
- John Welford, Australia.
May 28, 2019
--------------------
I purchased all three of Braz Menezes’ books in Toronto. Although on vacation in Toronto with family I started reading the books starting with Volume 1 “Beyond the Cape“. Once I started on the books I could not put them down finding time in between catching up with family. Needless to say, I was probably not a very good houseguest. I felt I was part of the book as I could relate to the travel by ship to Goa from Kenya. The books helped me understand the formation of the different Goan clubs in Nairobi and Mombasa. My sense of pride in being Goan and raised in a modest family was uplifted with these books. The books bring out the sense of community between Muslim, Christian, and Hindu.
- Pascal Mascarenhas
--------------------
AMONG THE JACARANDA
In Braz Menezes’ book “Among the jacaranda-buds of Matata in Kenya,” he displays all the ingredients of a skillful storyteller drawing the reader immediately into the events of Lando’s his personal life (the author’s alter ego). He educates us on the cultural diversities that exist between Lando and Eleanor and how harmoniously they can intermingle. We also partake in both Lando’s historical and geographic journeys.
Braz utilizes all the five senses: where we get to taste and smell Lando’s food, visualize the sights described, hear the city sound and feel joy and sadness of everyday events.
He juxtaposes life’s joys and death’s despair. For a while the reader relishes in the delights of the extended family festivities which are closely followed by a tragic death, bringing the reader to face the unpredictability of real life.
He tackles Lando’s career, religion, ethnicity, political challenges, family, life and death and every possible facet of living in the UK to Kenya in the turbulent late sixties. Among the Jacaranda demonstrates that Life’s conflicts can be valiantly and diligently overcome in Braz’s literary work.
We anxiously await his next adventure to help fill more of the puzzle.
- Maria P. Marchelletta
Writer and Editors Association President
May 28, 2019
------------------------
[REVIEW] AMONG THE JACARANDA
Dearest Braz,
I have just finished THE book and cannot go out until I take a few minutes to tell you how much I enjoyed the eagerly awaited ‘Among the Jacaranda’. I loved it on so many levels. The way you weave important Kenyan history with fast-paced personal stories is brilliant and makes for a very quick read. As with your other books, you are the best storyteller and your choice of words to describe things, places and people made me feel that I was part of the ‘landscape’. It is no surprise that you paint as well as write!
Your mentioning of Linda made me smile because we had the pleasure of meeting her (and David). Honestly, I could hear her beautiful articulate voice in every scene you described.
WOW! You have lived such an amazing life and were so very blessed to have had the extraordinary parents you had. Your mum’s untimely death at 50 had me in tears.
On a very personal level, I can only imagine how difficult it was to write about your life and love for ‘Eleanor’ especially because those good times ended and she is no longer alive. However, I hear her cheering you onward!!
I read the book in three sittings. Your book is truly a “page turner”. Bravo!
I thought the primer at the end was a wise thing to add and found it a helpful synopsis of Kenyan history. I did not know many things you described about Zanzibar and Goa, even though I have visited those countries. I had to read the primer paragraph three times with your stats reminding me that Africa was divided into 50 territories parcelled out to 7 colonial powers in the 19c.
Your three Matata books need to be on school library shelves - such an entertaining way to learn an important history.
Rest upon your laurels but not too long!!! Thanks, again, for being YOU.
- Celia Rasmussen, Toronto
------------------------------------
[REVIEW] AMONG THE JACARANDA
Once again the writer captures our imagination within the pages of the third in the Matata series. Among the Jacaranda is a charming and well-crafted account of real life events as experienced through the eyes of the writer’s alter-ego, Lando.
In this book we join Lando as he embarks on his journey to England to study at the University of Liverpool. Through him we live the experiences of student life in England in the early 60’s. Lando will take us on his journey through Europe where we are sucked into his adventures, sharing his angst at being robbed by border guards and his relief of being offered a way to continue his travels. We become enamored by his romantic liaison with the lovely Eleanor and we rejoice at his subsequent marriage to her.
Lando imbues us with a sense of excitement when he returns to his beloved Kenya, on completion of his studies. If one is of Kenyan birth, Lando will awaken dormant memories of a rich and intrinsically vibrant life in the paradise we had left behind to migrate to foreign lands. To those not of Kenyan birth, Lando takes you on a sensory exploration of a beautiful country abounding in scenic landscapes, vast wildlife preservation parks and finest beaches. When Lando introduces the ever-engaging Eleanor to Kenya, we view this land through new and eager eyes that willingly accept its shortcomings without rancor and revel in its perfections, of which there are many! With Lando and his new bride we share the trials and uncertainties of establishing a life in post independent Kenya. They are presented with a myriad of challenges, which they tackle with their indomitable spirit and sense of adventure.
Throughout the pages of this book, the writer’s easy style is nonetheless captivating as he reveals his own life experiences through his protagonist, Lando. Mr. Menezes’ ability to lace fact with his wry wit makes for a delightful page-turner. The reader will share in his palpable joy at the birth of his beautiful daughter and grieve with him at the passing of his Mother whom he/she has come to know and enjoy through the pages of this story.
This is a story of family, of adventure, of maturing adulthood. I consider myself privileged to have read Among the Jacaranda and wish to thank Mr. Menezes for so unstintingly sharing this life journey. I absolutely recommend that everyone read this book. If you enjoy this read, you will want to also get your hands on Beyond the Cape (Book 1) an expanded second edition of Just Matata, as well as More Matata (Book 2), for equally fascinating and informative reading. Whether you are born of Kenyan soil, or not, you are guaranteed of a great reading, seeing life through the eyes of a man who has seen and experienced much.
Joan Do Rosario, Mississauga
---------------------------
[REVIEW] AMONG THE JACARANDA
·August 14, 2018
Ah, yes, how very fortunate for me and other fans of finely crafted writing:
More literary magic by Braz Menezes!
AMONG THE JACARANDA,
Buds of Matata in Kenya,
A Novel Based on Real Events,
Matata Books, Toronto, 2018,
ISBN-13: 978-1724274847 (USA);
SBN 978-0-9877963-7-0, Paperback (Canada).
This is the long anticipated sequel to two previous novels by Braz, to complete the trilogy. It is like a longed-for and missing part of a trip-tic image to complete a painting on one’s literary wall. We are being treated to the author’s style of taking the reader on another fascinating journey consisting, in fact, of many travels through life in a personal, cultural, historical, and geographic sense.
Lando, who we have had a chance to get to know in considerable detail in the preceding two accounts, has determined to return to London to further his education, and to complete his studies as a future urban planner. He does so with the blessings of his parents, and with a granted scholarship to facilitate the completion of his plans, hopes, and ambitions, and the fulfillment of his dreams. We are being introduced to his new-found friends, and accompany them on their exciting vacation trips in Europe.
Braz’ narrative is fast-paced, and invites the reader to relish all that is being done, seen, heard, taste-tested, explored and discovered: countries, cultures, fine food and drink, good people, occasional crafty schemers, the exciting sights and sounds of history, diverse geography, fascinating flora and fauna. Lando meets and falls in love with Eleanor, a fellow student. They share personal interests, travels, adventures, learn to solve problems and face challenges together. They become a couple, bringing together diverse families of different cultural origins in two countries on two continents. Let me not give away all the delightful details and secrets in this brief review…
Lando and Eleanor move from the UK to Kenya, to establish themselves, and to adjust to the demands and conditions of life in a newly independent country, with a traumatic history, and a very complex multi-cultural setting which is not without conflicts and in part also with tragic consequences. Lando and Eleanor welcome Alice Emily into their family. Lando attempts to establish himself as an architect in his own right, and is hopeful for a successful future in a new and very competitive economy.
Braz weaves a fascinating literary fabric, which combines the colorful threads of race and ethnicity, language, religious differences, and cultural traditions. He builds bridges between Goa on the Indian subcontinent, the land of his ethnic, religious, and cultural ancestry, and Kenya as a British colony and subsequently as a struggling independent nation with incredible political challenges, and not infrequent turmoil. Braz also fashions various historical, geographic and personal links to England and Europe in a style of writing which is simply fascinating.
It is a book I found difficult to put down for even a momentary pause to fetch another cup of coffee… I recommend it highly, and it even foreshadows the possibility and prospect that this literary trilogy might in due course welcome a literary sibling to form a quartet. I can hardly wait! I am certain that it also promises to be great!
Gerhard A. Fuerst,
Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA;
retired Adjunct Professor of Social Science, Western Michigan University
----------------------
Among the Jacaranda is the third in the Matata series: Just Matata (reissued as an expanded edition as Beyond the Cape 1920-1950) and More Matata (1951-1963) by the Kenya born author Braz Menezes, a former award-winning architect.
The first three books quickly established a large fan base for Menezes who quickly became recognised for imbuing the hero of the books, Lando, with wit, humour, a sense of adventure as well paying homage to Kenya and especially Nairobi. No doubt Among The Jacaranda is already assured of a following; probably more in E-books than the printed variety, both are easily available.
I am finding reviewing this exceptional trip down nostalgia road a tough gig. Not only because I get a left-handed compliment but because, like Menezes, I was born and raised in Kenya and I think the author is a couple of years older than I. Hence it is easy for me to walk down familiar roads to familiar suburbs, Goan social clubs, especially the Goan Gymkhana (where I was a rare visitor) and many, many familiar faces.
Some one questioned the other day why East African Goans over-feast on their past lives in the former British colonies. History. Just a shared history and the unbreakable links that a community gives birth to. Even more, authors like Menezes, Mervyn Maciel (the doyen author of Bwana Karani) also act as low-level historians charting the lives and times of Goans and prove to be invaluable in the absence of any recorded history or documented almanacs. Even more importantly, fact or fiction based on true events, serve enlighten the non-Goans in our respective adopted countries about everything Kenyan in historical terms.
More importantly, Lando mirrors to a large degree the lives of young Goan men and women who began university life in the 1960s, got their first job, excelled at sport, or towards the end of the 1950s or early 1960s faced the heartbreak of being forced to leave the country with their parents on the onset of independence. On the other hand, there were many young people who achieved the move to university life overseas and committed themselves to a future back in independent Kenya. Menezes’ hero, Lando (who, I am sure is based largely on his own life) did just that.
So if you have slightest connection (and even if you have no connection) with Kenya, then hope along for a nostalgic safari.
For a young man who had not travelled much before, there is all the wonder of a European holiday to explore. You will have to buy the book to enjoy the details.
Lando, seeking fame and fortune as a future architect, heads for university in Liverpool in 1964. Even though the UK is running a high fever, fighting to “keep Asians out”, Lando is unphased. He is aware of it and is concerned about the treatment and abuse being meted out to Indians who already settled in the UK. However, Lando is just an observer.
It is not long before our intrepid hero meets a white girl and takes the first steps towards falling in love over a period of many months. Menezes takes us on a romantic journey that is rather seamless, without drama of any kind and the two later head for Kenya to make bliss official at the wedding ceremony in Nairobi. As I said, it is all very seamless.
On his return to Nairobi, Lando spends as much time as he can at the Goan Gymkhana. To his delight, most of his friends are still there and club continues to function in an independent Kenya with little change. These days, in Sydney, Australia, I chew the nostalgia fat with one of the friends he mentions in the book: Felix. With a bunch of other ex-Nairobi friends who meet at a bowling each Friday, come rain or shine or whatever, we celebrate our collective past.
There is much, much more to this valuable contribution to the historical record of the Goan community in Kenya, especially Nairobi.
I loved it. Because it is everything so familiar. Another winner for Menezes.
- Cyprian Fernandes (Yesterday in Paradise, Stars Next Door)
Cyprian Fernandes is a former Chief Reporter of the Nation.
-----------------------------------------------
A glimpse of Mombasa
‘We drive over the Makupa Causeway that links the mainland to the island of Mombasa. A short while later we are crossing the Nyali Bridge and heading north. It is about 5 pm when we pull into the magnificent portico of the Nyali Beach Hotel.
It’s pure luxury to wash of the day’s dust, change into clean cotton evening wear, and sip a long cold drink on the terrace of the hotel. The terrace, set high up on a promontory of coral, offers beautiful views of Old Town Mombasa and the large colonial mansions.
The pin sky turns slowly to a bright orange as the sun disappears over the island.
An overnight stay at this beautiful hotel and its stunning view of Mombasa was the big surprise I had managed to keep secret from Eleanor.’
--------------------------------------------
SWEEPING IN SCOPE – ENDLESSLY FASCINATING
Braz Menezes, already a recognized writer, emerges here as an adept and highly skilled long-form storyteller as well.
The story is that of Lando, from his early days as a Catholic schoolboy in Kenya until that country’s independence in 1963. (His origins and family history are covered in more depth in the first book of the trilogy, Just Matata: Sin, Saints, and Settlers.) There is little doubt that it is Menezes’ own narrative, based on his experiences and impressions augmented by family legends and careful research. Central to the book is the profound and sensitive love story that is woven through Lando’s life, in unobtrusive episodes, from age 10 to his middle years. But this is much more than a tale of one life and one love.
In his after-note, the author says his intention is to enrich the existing literature on Indians in East Africa (by M.G. Vassanji, et al.), by bringing to light the extensive but little-known influence of the relatively few Goans there, migrants from Portuguese India. This he does, with great success — but without ever “teaching” history. His true-to-life characters live it in their day-to-day activities. The circumstances of life in Goa and Kenya, and the realities of the times — Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau uprising, the struggles in Africa between the disparate colonizers and native peoples and immigrant groups, developments in Europe — unfold naturally as they touch the Goan community and the lives of the characters. There is no clumsy narrator overview: the contemporary international and regional events enter the story organically, via the BBC World Service on short-wave, national and local newspapers, and of course rumours and gossip.
Menezes has an acute ear for the rhythms of conversation. He uses dialogue extensively to advance the story, to give the scenes much of their local flavour, and to enhance the characters’ authenticity. He introduces considerable suspense, and resolves it with a deft hand — in the love story, in Lando’s maturing, in the family’s internal dramas, and in the political environment.
It is a rather long book: sweeping in scope, full of details and images and background. But it is not long in the reading — it moves along smoothly and is endlessly fascinating. The reader soaks up the ambience with eagerness, and truly cares about the characters and the events and the outcomes.
Menezes tells us that matata is a Swahil word for trouble. But if you’ve hesitated to pick up this book because you guess from the title that it’s just for an “ethnic” readership — hesitate no longer. It is for every reader who loves a powerful and well-told story about real people in the real world. Including this unrepentant Muzungu (white person).
- John Ambury - Toronto, Canada
John Ambury is part of the Writers and Editors Network Toronto and the Ontario Poetry Society.
December 29, 2014
--------------------------
MORE MATATA REVIEWS
[REVIEW] MATATA TIMES THREE
I finished reading More Matata, a novel by Braz Menezes, a few days ago. It is a very good novel. The protagonist is called Lando and in this, the second novel in a trilogy, he focuses on a lot of the give and take of political issues in Kenya from the ’50s up to the early ’60s. Lando provides realistic and passionate discussions between Goans who have different points of view about the issues that concern them and their future such as the take over of Goa by India in 1961; the forthcoming Independence of Kenya in December 1963; the portraits and actions of the most powerful African politicians in Kenya; etc.
I had made a few comments and asked a few questions in Goa Book Club after reading Volume I. Specifically, I wondered how it was possible to tell the story of Goans working for the civil service in Kenya during a time of Mau Mau without mentioning the Mau Mau at all. But I see now that my questions were being answered in Volume II, subtitled “Love After the Mau Mau”. Lando not only knew everything I asked, he knew it in fuller detail than I did. What I thought were secrets mentioned in whispers were actually given expression directly by different people in Kenya. They were only whispered in the Ministry of Finance in Uganda, where I worked in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
The second novel is very political. Lando describes the landscape, the flora and fauna, with great depth and insight. But it also includes the people, something barely noticed by tourists busy watching animals making love instead of people fighting to get back their land. Lando went everywhere in the country, not only out of curiosity but also following his occupation after graduation as an architect. His father was a bank employee and member of the Goan Gymkhana, full of civil servants, so he grew up being aware of what was going on. Being an architect gives him a particularly practical way of looking at and seeing everything.
I have a question when it came to Saboti, mentioned in the first volume and in more depth in the second. When she returns into Lando’s life and he finds out more about her, he realizes she is not from Seychelles as he had thought: she was English through her father and Masai through her mother, so she was nusu-nusu, half and half. My question: Lando loses her in England after too short a time apart, loses her to an Englishman. At this time, love across the races was difficult — but what happened would suggest that their love was not love but infatuation. Yes, such a relationship across colour lines would be difficult at that time, but the novel gives examples of overcoming such a barrier such as Joseph Murumbi, whose father was Goan and mother Masai. But the ultimate meaning of the relationship will depend on what is presented in Part III.
Lando is a good storyteller. He is observant and has a wide and deep knowledge and is sympathetic to the Kikuyu people over their land alienation and yet is not blinded to political betrayals or to the scheming of the British. By good storyteller, I mean that several episodes are very dramatic. The chapters are short, almost anecdotal. There is a fine sense of humor and irony in the chapter titles.
Menezes’ way of structuring the novel is not external like an architect but internal in that certain images become iconic and represent more than what they seem to be such as the cover image of the two zebras attempting to kiss. What does this mean? We have to figure it out. Maybe it has more than one meaning.
In his acknowledgements, Menezes says that most people are unaware of the special culture of Goans that developed under 450 years of Portuguese rule. The point is WE EXIST! We do not define ourselves through tourist brochures, we are not like zebras for tourists to gawk at, though the black and white colours of the zebras could be a metaphor for Goans, who have combined cultures, East and West, who have not merely resided where they went, whose children became part of the people and the land and had an awareness and made contributions. A big struggle for Goans has been to prove that we exist as a people.
But after the event, after decolonization, the task is even more important: Goans are being made invisible and that what they achieved seems to be in danger of being lost to history. What is history? On one level, it is a record of what happened. If there is no record, what happened disappears, and so do the people.
Lest one gets too caught up in the stereotype of the obedient Goan civil servant, one should pay attention to the text. The Goans were not totally obedient and did not stay out of politics. On the contrary, More Matata provided details and portraits of Goans who were anti-colonial political activists such as Pio Gama Pinto, JM Nazareth, and others. Pinto was imprisoned by the British and after independence, he was elected to parliament in an African constituency. He was assassinated in early 1965 and is considered to be Independent Kenya’s first martyr without any concern about the fact that he was a Goan. To this day, questions are asked about who killed him — when it is well known who did and why. So the notion that Goans stayed out of politics was a cover for political involvement in Kenya and an ongoing debate about whether those working for the British could go against British interests. A lot of such debates take place in the novel in the Goan Gymkhana and the other Goan institutes.
- Peter Nazareth
December 2, 2016
--------------------------
A whole new world opened for me .....
I learned so much which continues to enrich my life today
Thank you for great reads
- Barbara Prichard
--------------------------
Your books were a history lesson to me. Being born in 1950 and brought up in the Highlands of Kenya, Molo. By the time I was 12 and leaving for South Africa just before Independence, I had not even heard of a Goan and knew very little about what went on in Nairobi. I have bought so many of my friends your books. And my idea of the Mau Mau was Kenyatta was a 'giant', my parents always referred to him as an Ogre, and as a 4/5 year old, all I could think of was Jack and the Beanstalk with the Ogre at the top. He was a Giant. Strange how kids brains work. I love to reread your books Braz.
- Anna Murray
--------------------------
I could not put it down Braz, so no sleep for a few nights !! great read totally fascinating. We were in Nairobi with a Kikuyu Ayah who had to be returned to her family as she was oathed to murder me and my sister luckily Dad noticed her behaviour change and she was taken back to her father by my dad.
- Philip Hotton
--------------------------
I was engaged by Lando's story as he graduated from school and started his career. My heart raced as I followed him in his pursuit of the woman who captured his heart. There was a lot to learn from the historical background of this novel - the Mau Mau struggle; the dark innuendos of colonial control; the mysterious disappearances of innocent people falsely accused in the tense fighting for power and about the Asian community and their stellar contributions to Kenya. A really good read!
- Vicki Bismilla
Jul 22, 2014
--------------------------
Mar 05, 2013
Lisette rated it
it was amazing. Having spent my early years in East Africa, with the majority in Nairobi, I found this book both nostalgic and entertaining. I read the book in 2 days... unable to put it down, and when I was finished I was hungering for more. Kudos to Braz for a literary blast from the past.
-----------------------
MORE MATATA: Love after the Mau Mau
(A novel set in Kenya and Goa. Book two of the Matata trilogy)
Braz Menezes
314 pp (incl. glossary and notes), paperback, ISBN 978-0-9877963-3-2
Matata Books, 2012. © The author
Braz Menezes, already a recognized writer, emerges here as a highly skilled long-form story-teller as well.
The story is that of Lando, from his early days as a Catholic schoolboy in Kenya until that country’s independence in 1963. There is little doubt that it is Menezes’ own narrative, based on his experiences and impressions augmented by family legends and careful research. Central to the book is the profound and sensitive love story that is woven through Lando’s life, in episodes from age 10 to his middle years.
But this is much more than a tale of one life and one love. In his after-note, the author says his intention is to enrich the existing literature on Indians in East Africa (by M.G. Vassanji, et al), by bringing to light the extensive but little-known influence of the relatively few Goans there, migrants from Portuguese India. This he does very well — but without ever “teaching” history. His true-to-life characters live it in their day-to-day activities. The circumstances of life in Goa and Kenya, and the realities of the times — Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau uprising, the struggles in Africa between the disparate colonizers and native peoples and immigrant groups, developments in Europe — unfold naturally as they affect the Goan community and the lives of the characters. There is no clumsy narrator overview: international and regional events enter the story organically, via the BBC World Service on short-wave, national and local newspapers, and of course rumours and gossip.
Menezes has an acute ear for the rhythms of conversation. He uses dialogue extensively to advance the story, to give the scenes much of their local flavour, and to enhance the characters’ authenticity. He introduces considerable suspense, and resolves it with a deft hand — in Lando’s maturing, in the love story, in the family’s internal dramas, and in the political environment.
It is a rather long book: sweeping in scope, full of details and images and background. But it is not long in the reading — it moves along smoothly and is endlessly fascinating. The reader soaks up the ambience with eagerness, and truly cares about the characters and the events and the outcomes.
Menezes tells us that “matata” is a Swahili word (“trouble”). But if you’ve hesitated to pick up this book because you guess from the title that it’s just for an “ethnic” readership — hesitate no longer. It is for every reader who loves a powerful and well-told story about real people in the real world. Including this unrepentant “Muzungu” (white person).
-- John Ambury, ATSC, 2014
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sonia Gomes rated it: Really liked it
Recommends it for: Anyone who wants to know about Kenya in the sixties
This is the second book in the Matata trilogy and it takes off with Lando returning home to Kenya, after his disastrous time at the boarding school in Goa.
On his return he finds himself in the thick of the Mau Mau, the uprising to end the terrible colonialism in Kenya.
The adults avoid discussing the Mau Mau with their children…probably trying to protect them, but Lando, feisty that he is, finds a way around this hurdle, he eavesdrops, he gets a bottle of coke a packet of chips and is on his sleuthing game.
The Bar at the Goan Gymkhana is their snooping ground; it is here that Lando and his friends learn the goriest details, the brutal and bloody fight to end the British Colonialism, the roundup of all the leaders of African Resistance, the incarceration of Jomo Kenyata and Pio Gama, the interracial wars between the different tribes of Kenya. Whatever Chico and Anja tried to conceal from Lando, he learns about it at the Goan Gymkhana.
Braz, skips through his College and Architectural College devoting a great deal of time to Saboti, the illegitimate daughter of an English Landowner in Kenya and his ‘kitchen wife’. Lando falls in love with Saboti, hither and thither they caper with the deep knowledge that such an union would definitely be prohibited by Lando’s parents, who ultra-conservative that they are, would probably want Lando to marry a good, Catholic, Brahmin Goan girl. This union would not go down well with the Kenyans themselves.
Braz Menezes packs in a great deal of information that tells us about Kenya in the early sixties, the Mau Mau rebellion, the sad state of ‘the kept’ women by the English Landowners, the freedom of a totally mixed college, his jobs at the Architecture firms and much more.
A real compendium of facts and information about pre-liberation Kenya.
----------------------------------------------------------------
NS rated it: It was amazing
I really enjoyed reading this book as well as beyond the cape. It gives the reader an in depth look at kenya and goa through the eyes of a growing boy, living through the effects of colonialism and eventually independence. The author does a great job connecting with the reader on a personal level, while giving them a crash course on East African, Indian, British and Portuguese history as well. Can't wait to read the 3rd, "Among the Jacaranda"
----------------------------------------------------------------
5.0 out of 5 stars
A slice of Goan history in Kenya's pre-independent existence
Reviewed in India on 16 January 2021
'More Matata' opens with a beautiful epigraph, a poem by Zohra Zoberi, called Editing Myself. The poem touches upon what we retain (or don't) as life goes on. The Prologue draws similarities between the author and Barack Obama's Kenyan father, since both have spent their growing years in Kenya.
The story continues from the first novel, 'Just Matata' and follows the growing up years of Lando in Kenya. The book is written in present tense and the author has maintained a skilled grip over his narrative blend of personal and political histories. The novel draws from real events and holds the reader till its heartbreaking close (sorry for this spoiler - I was rooting very hard for Lando).
This Matata trilogy is a perfect study for students of Postcolonial fiction because it captures the angst of working Goans (the community of mostly Catholics from the erstwhile Portuguese colony of Goa) in Africa. Subjects of Portugal (in Goa) and of Britain (in Kenya), these Goans had moved there for better job prospects.
---------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment