Novel · A way to begin
Chiquinho
Baltasar Lopes da Silva · 1947
Synopsis
Chiquinho grows up on São Nicolau, between his mother, his grandmother and the wait for letters from his father, who has left for America. He goes to school, discovers books and first loves, then moves to another island to pursue his secondary studies. Drought sets in meanwhile: the harvests fail, people go down to the port, and the ships carry the men away. He must decide whether to stay or to embark in his turn.
Context
The novel is the application of a programme: the review Claridade, founded in 1936, had decided that the writers of the archipelago would stop imitating Lisbon and write their islands instead. It was begun in the very year of that foundation, completed in Lisbon in the early forties and published six years later, in three parts that follow childhood, the neighbouring island and the waters. The Portuguese of the text is shot through with Creole, which was then a stance and not a stylistic effect. Its author also published a study of the Creole speech of the archipelago, a language that he maintained was a language in its own right.
Who it is for
A simple and luminous childhood narrative, with no difficulty in reading. The passages in Creole are translated or clear from the context.
Prizes and reception
The first Cape Verdean novel, published in 1947, it is on the curriculum of the archipelago's schools and has been reissued several times in Portugal and Brazil.