The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo, Germano Almeida

I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping on December 24 at Hullabaloo Books in Crown Heights and browsing the fiction selection there when I spotted The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo. I almost dismissed it as probably Portuguese (not that I'm against reading Portuguese novels, but Portugal - and Brazil for that matter - are both already checked off on my world books list), but I pulled it out and saw this:

This felt ~significant~ because back when I had the conversation with my friend Daniel that started this whole world reading project, I asked, "What is the great Cape Verdean novel?" (I should add that the inside flap of this book describes Almeida as "the greatest living Cape Verdean writer.") So, obviously I bought the book and I started reading it shortly thereafter.

This book had a fun narrative style. It tells the life story of Senhor Araújo by way of his book-length will on the occasion of its being read before witnesses after his death. It jumps around a bit between the text from the actual will and other sources, and often you're not really sure what the source is. The story is both funny and poignant. I also felt like I got a feel for the Cape Verdean islands, which was part of the whole point of this undertaking.