Novel
The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo
O Testamento do Sr. Napumoceno da Silva Araújo
Germano de Almeida · 1989
Synopsis
At his death, Napumoceno da Silva Araújo was regarded in Mindelo as a considerable businessman: a reputable firm, an upright man, a methodical bachelor without vices. Then the notary opens the will, three hundred and eighty-seven pages written ten years earlier, and begins to read it before the assembled family. Page after page, another life emerges: the poor beginnings, the scheming, the women, a daughter of whom no one knew anything. The text will have to be read to the end.
Context
The first novel by a lawyer from Mindelo, it was published by a small publishing house that the author had founded with friends, after stories published under a pseudonym in a local magazine. The book broke with the subjects that had occupied the letters of the archipelago since the thirties, drought, emigration, attachment to the land, and replaced them with irony applied to the merchant bourgeoisie. The form is largely responsible: everything passes through a document read aloud, in a free indirect style that leaves the reader to judge alone. Translated into French as early as 1995, then into Basque and English, it was adapted for the cinema in 1997.
Who it is for
One hundred and eighty pages, in Portuguese, of constant irony. No prior knowledge of the archipelago is necessary, but the place names gain their savour when one can place them.
Prizes and reception
It made the letters of Cape Verde known beyond the archipelago and has made its author the most widely read novelist in the country; the Camões Prize was awarded to him in 2018.