PAULINA CHIZIANE was born in an area of Mozambique in 1955 in which
communication with the white colonizers was forbidden. She devoted
herself to writing in her mid-twenties and became the first
Mozambican woman ever to publish a novel. She claims, however, that
she is not a novelist- "I am a storyteller... I take my inspiration
from tales around the campfire, my first art school." Her works
explore themes of race, polygamy, colonization, and cultural change
in her country, quietly signaling a new era for African
feminism.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR- DAVID BROOKSHAW is a London-born professor of
Brazilian Studies at the University of Bristol specializing in
comparative literature, translation, and postcolonial Portuguese
literature. He has translated works by Mia Cuoto and Onesimo
Almeida and compiled an anthology of stories by the Portuguese
author Jose Rodrigues Migueis.
"Rami's realistic, back-and-forth struggle to believe the promises
of her lying but charming husband remains suspensefully unresolved
right up to the last page and the final surprise. Chiziane's
down-to-earth style in The First Wife is that of an African
storyteller, sometimes rhythmical and repetitive, frequently
composed of short, staccato sentences in an exclamatory
rush.... Feisty and exuberant, ferociously candid... With
delightful complications and unexpected plot turns, Chiziane's
battle of the sexes is like none other in world literature."
-- Shelf Awareness
"This novel by Chiziane, the first published Mozambiquan female
novelist, is daring, biting in its critique."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A careful examination of tradition clashing with modernity,
most prevalently the place of women within Mozambique’s society,
and within the world in general. . . Slowly, painfully, as
tradition looms in the background, Rami and the other women in
Tony’s life begin to discover a space for themselves and what it
can mean to be more than a part of a “loving hexagon.”"
--Publishers Weekly
"Chiziane has crafted a story that is at once an affirmation of
African feminism and a rousingly entertaining tale of female
friendship that would please any fan of best-selling women’s
fiction... Both informed reading and terrific fun for a wide range
of readers."
--Library Journal (starred review)
"The First Wife is a meditation on polygamy and the ways women gain
and lose agency in both monogamous and polygamous households...This
novel prizes community over solitude among women. The First Wife
acknowledges that the reader may not know the nuances of bride
price, polygamy, and other specific cultural practices and explains
them without being too disruptive to the reader’s experience, and
the reader leaves with a deeper understanding of one woman’s
experiences after living in two different marriage models."
--World Literature Today
"This is a powerful and angry book... The writing is urgent
and surprising... a work of great imagination and
creativity."
--A Year of Reading the World
"Chiziane explores the economics of love and marriage in a country
burdened with a history of violent conflict, where men are few and
women not necessarily educated or welcomed into the workforce. In
such a society, she says, men are the breadcrumbs women must fight
over.[...] For better or for worse, so many of the questions about
gender, marriage, and money feel familiar and relevant, even to
readers for whom polygamy feels profoundly foreign."
--Carolyn Silveira, Words Without Borders
"The people who will change Chiziane’s country (or any country)
need love stories like The First Wife, which admit that no new
freedoms are gained without seemingly pointless suffering...
Chiziane’s prose alternates between a dramatic, high-octave style –
often when Rami is suffering – and a terse and humorous frankness.
She cites the Portuguese poet Florbela Espanca as her most
important influence, and there is something similar in the way both
writers are able to express the peaks of emotion, while never
forgetting the part of the self which evaluates oneself."
--London Review of Books
"In the end, The First Wife, rather than going easy on men,
amounts to a sustained critique of them. And Chiziane proves
herself to be an acute and occasionally outraged observer of
the male place in Mozambican society."
--John Vanderslice, The Pleiades Book Review
"The style of writing in the novel feels like an oral tradition.
There are repeated phrases, metaphors, similes - often in patterns.
I could hear it in my mind the way a mother might pass on the words
to her daughter, to prepare her, to warn her."
--Jenny Colvin, Reading Envy
"The First Wife, smoothly translated by David Brookshaw, rises
above its satire by confronting a mysogynistic practice head on
... Chiziane, who prefers to be called a storyteller instead
of a writer, is cited as her country’s first published female
novelist ... The First Wife [is] an excellent example of her
courage."
--Michael Barron, The Culture Trip
"[Paulina Chiziane] is a storyteller, deeply rooted in the soil of
her tradition, with a clarity and poetry that has character, strong
colours, subtle hues and melodies without being ethnic or local...
Chiziane has an elegantly mature authorial voice, a beautifully
balanced lyricism and an unfailing sense of imagery and human
emotion. Hers is a voice comfortable with its timbre and the
flexions of its tonality, aware of the difficulty – and dire
necessity – for simplicity... The First Wife is a voice that will
not be silenced, it is a powerful, original experience of what it
meant to listen to a story by the fire – frightening, enthralling,
harrowing and wondrous, mystical, inescapable."
--Bookanista
"A lively, engaging read."
--The Complete Review
"This is a powerful and angry book. . . Yet, for all its fury,
the narrative is underpinned by an appreciation of the
interconnectedness of the human experience. . . The writing is
urgent and surprising."
--A Year of Reading the World (blog)
"In the style that characterises her writing, the novel pulls no
punches, and the polemic it constructs is passionate and engaging.
The First Wife is alive with intrigue and happenings...It is this
sense of strength, of resilience, of passion, and simultaneously of
acceptance, of resignation that both excite and irritate that make
Niketche such an enjoyable and provocative read."
-- Tony Simões da Silva, African Review of Books
"... the narrator expreses the suffering of all women, divided
between the desire to live and what appears to be an inner death
(...) condemned to lose all her battles and to drift in the
shadows."
-- Geneviève Vilner, Plural-Pluriel
"... the theme also allows her to lead the reader to discover a
country and its customs, and to create some magnificent depictions
of women."
-- Olivia Marsaud, Afrik.com
"What we have, in Paulina, is the most authentic representation of
the problems faced by women in Mozambican society."
--Teresa Noronha, Jornal de Notícias
"In their resistance against Tony’s womanizing ways, the women find
an unexpected solidarity by banding together and demanding the
rights they should be granted by the old rules of polygamy, all
while encouraging each other in new quests to be more independent,
economically and emotionally . . . This book from Mozambique has a
fascinating art to it that’s impossible to resist."
--Book Riot
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