The will of Mr. Napomuceno da Silva Araujo

Author's name: Germano Almeida

The reading of the sealed will left by Mr. Napomuceno da Silva Araújo took an entire afternoon. When the notary reached page 150, he admitted his fatigue and asked for a glass of water. As he sipped small sips, he murmured, "The deceased actually wrote a memoir instead of a will." With this passage, Cape Verdean literature opens a new chapter in its modern history. More than thirty years after its publication, The Testament of Mr. Napomuceno da Silva Araújo remains a founding text in African literature written in Portuguese. It is a novel rich in sound registers and replete with biting critical allusions to society. Through characters from the city of Mindelo, Guizmano Almeida depicts the strata of local society and portrays their various mentalities and conflicting perceptions of life. He accomplishes this with a narrative style that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. He also intelligently and satirically documents phenomena that have long been ingrained in the lived reality of the island's inhabitants: drought, hunger, and migration among the working classes, on the one hand, and the political and moral corruption that dominates the political and economic classes, on the other.