Shadows and Lights in <i>O Senhor das Ilhas</i>, by Maria Isabel Barreno

Abstract

Halfway between a historical novel, a chronicle and a work of fiction, O Senhor das Ilhas recounts through the narrative and fictitious voices of two of his children, Manuel António Martins’s adventurous and hectic story. That man was the actual great-great grand-father of the author of this book. The novel conjures up from the past the story of several generations of a Portuguese colonial family settled in the Cape Verde Islands. The archipelago becomes an idyllic and often terrifying setting of a saga which spans from 1780 till 1840. Recollecting a colonial past which she denied during her youth, Maria Isabel Barreno achieves with this novel a form of reconciliation with her paternal ancestor, a settler and slave owner on the one hand, but also a man of the Enlightenment, a human and brave enterprising man. The shadows which surround this character are partially blurred by the light of the islands, unveilling a reality which is probably not exactly compliant with History but which seems to show that the condition of islander and of insularity are filled with paradoxes that should be envisaged considering a simultaneously religious and heathen sacredness.

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Original in French.