First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Mozambique, 1894. Sergeant Germano de Melo is posted to the village of Nkokolani to oversee the Portuguese conquest of territory claimed by Ngungunyane, the last emperor of the State of Gaza. Ngungunyane has raised an army to resist colonial rule and with his warriors is slowly approaching the border village. Desperate for help, Germano enlists Imani, a fifteen-year-old girl, to act as his interpreter. She belongs to the VaChopi tribe, one of the few who dared side with the Portuguese Crown, while the others have chosen the African emperor. Standing astride two kingdoms, Imani is drawn to Germano, just as he is drawn to her. But she knows that in a country haunted by violence, the only way out for a woman is to go unnoticed, as if made of shadows or ashes.

Alternating between the voices of Imani and Germano, Mia Couto’s Woman of the Ashes combines vivid folkloric prose with extensive historical research to give a spellbinding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century.

Happy Friday everyone! We made it through yet another workweek. The weekend is just over the corner. I hope everyone ended the work week on a high note and is diving into the weekend without much worry. I hope you were able to accomplish all your tasks for the week. Props to everyone for making it through the workweek. It is time to unwind and dive into the weekend! Woah. Time is passing us by. We are already on the second Friday of November. We are inching ever closer to the conclusion of 2024 and the commencement of a new year. How time flies! I hope that the year has been kind and great for everyone. Before the year ends, I hope your hard work gets recognized and repaid. I hope the remainder of the year will be brimming with good news, blessings, and pleasant surprises. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

As has been customary, I am sharing a fresh First Impression Friday update to cap the blogging week. This weekly meme has, over time, become an integral part of my book blogging. From a typical update blog that allowed me to figure out my initial feelings about the book I was reading, my First Impression Friday updates have turned into springboards for my book reviews. Reading-wise, the previous two months were mixed bags. It seems that November is going to be the same. However, after completing all Booker Prize-shortlisted books last month, I am turning my attention on books that are part of my ongoing reading challenges. I guess this is nothing new as I usually scramble toward the year. I still have three books from my 2024 Top 24 Reading List and six from my 2024 Beat the Backlist challenge. I can finish all of them but I don’t want to burden myself come December so I am already decongesting.

The twenty-second book from my 2024 Top 24 Reading List I read so far is Mozambican writer Mia Couto’s Woman of the Ashes. Before the pandemic, I have never come across Couto. Apparently, he is quite a highly-heralded and prolific writer, with an oeuvre that spans novels, poetry, and short stories. For his extensive body of work, he received several accolades across the world such as the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2014 and the Camões Prize in 2013, the most important literary award in the Portuguese language. This is among the reasons why I included his novel Woman of the Ashes in my 2024 Top 24 Reading List. On top of this, I was raring to venture into uncharted – at least from my perspective – literary territories and Cuuto’s novel presented such an opportunity.

Originally published in 2018, the novel commences in 1894 when 15-year-old Imani’s village of Nkokolani finds itself stuck between two looming powers: one side is comprised of different ethnic groups, led by the terrifying emperor Ngungunyane and the other are the Portuguese, whose king Dom Carlos sends various emissaries, of which the latest is Sergeant Germano de Melo. The novel, I just learned, takes inspiration from the story of Ngungunyane, nicknamed the Lion of Gaza, the last emperor to rule the southern half of Mozambique in the late 19th century. It is also worthy to note that Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1975 and Couto is the son of Portuguese settlers. Couto’s parents decided to move back to Portugal but Couto and his siblings decided to stay in Mozambique. A couple of years later, Couto established himself as one of the most important writers in Mozambique.

What draws me toward the book is also the idea of learning about the history of a country whose history I haven’t read about. I know about Mozambique – I memorized all the countries of the world and their capitals when I was still eleven years old – but I don’t know much about its history. While I know that most of Africa has been colonized, it was only recently that I learned that Mozambique was colonized by the Portuguese. Woman of the Ashes provides me a glimpse of the country’s history through its dual-narrative technique; Imani’s first-person point-of-view alternated with letters sent by Sergeant Germano de Melo to his superiors in Portugal. Sergeant de Melo was unapologetic about Portugal’s colonialism. As such, he enlisted Imani’s help in assisting him in the village’s garrison; she was his interpreter.

Sergeant de Melo’s letters provide a glimpse into his character and his growing concern. This is the same in the case of Imani whose family sided with the Portuguese. However, internal strife within Imani’s family captured how divided they were between the Crown and the African Emperor. I am nearly done with the book which is the first book in As Areias do Imperador (Sands of the Emperor) trilogy. I hope I will be able to obtain the succeeding books in the trilogy. How about you fellow reader? What book or books have you read over the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!