My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

Archipelago Press publish some of the most interesting titles in translation, and The Joyful Song of the Partridge by Mozambican author Paulina Chiziane is no exception. Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw, this book is a family saga filled with tragedy and magic. We see the brutal effects of colonialism and the internalised racism/colourism that it fostered among the people it subjugated. Chiziane draws on a large cast of characters, from a wide range of backgrounds (class, race, age, gender) to provide a snapshot of life in Mozambique under Portuguese colonial rule. It’s as violent as you might expect, with characters perpetuating cycles of harm first inflicted on them, hatred and envy simmering and spilling over, feuds spanning decades. It is devastating to see how the colonists’ racism seeped into the minds of the country’s native people, poisoning their outlook on life and turning them against one another. Men are reduced to pawns and tools, betraying fellow Black people for the chance to be seen as an ‘honorary white’, not realising that such a thing was never in their grasp to begin with. Women have little agency and are often reduced to their bodies. Racial hierarchy is everything to the people in this book, and it’s undoubtedly heavy reading. But there’s something about Chiziane’s style, seamlessly translated, that makes it read almost like a fairytale. This book is nigh-on 500 pages and I flew through it in 4 days.

My one main issue is that, much like a fairy tale or a morality tale, everything ties up far too neatly at the end. Characters who do despicable things are forgiven too easily in my opinion.

But this is an exciting translation, and I hope we see more from Chiziane in English translation in the future!