The African Macondo: Javier painful victory Brandoli

For: Ricardo Coarasa

A bar of a bar is a good place to make decisions. That night, however, Javier reached the shore worthy of wines and beers with it already taken. It would live to Africa, Cape Town, to South Africa where months later Spain would win his first world. With him in the stands, clear. And there were two good friends who had traveled to Africa only tourists or fleeting journalism explaining Africa, puts it in a hasty vein survival manual. I guess we fell topics are hands as they were happening Swallows, but Javier Brandoli listened impassively Suspecting, I temo, that nothing would have expected him to do with this amalgam of memories more or less sublimated by the distance.

One thing I was clear that night in March 2010 and that, at least, I was not wrong: Africa would push Javier writing. For someone with such overwhelming curiosity about the world, it was almost a biblical commandment. And boy did. During his five years on the continent, first to South Africa and then in Mozambique, Javier has not stopped writing about Africa and its people. With logic innocence at first, Expectant provided somewhat skeptical at the end, moved away from paternalistic looks and magnanimous judgments about the African reality. So read the first African book was only a matter of time.

He has had time to become a correspondent, travel Guide, director of a hotel on the Indian post, He has known the love of his life and, especially, He has not stopped traveling

During those years, He has had time to become a correspondent, travel Guide, director of a hotel on the Indian post, He has known the love of his life and, especially, He has not stopped traveling, stumbling again and again with that same magical realism of Valle Inclan, with this Kafkaesque absurdity he sublimation, turning to another big, has aptly named "The African Macondo".

In this book, says the author, the gaze of someone "who has lived there" is locked in. And I can not agree with Javier, because their pages overflowing inexhaustible curiosity and desire to understand life around you and are fasting, however, any hint of routine and pernicious contempt with which, often, we live in our everyday environment.

For Javier, but perhaps he does not know, He has not ceased to be a traveler for all those years and it is precisely this wandering soul the cause of their disappointment last to, his departure from the mainland and nostalgia, Mal call that sweet melancholy Africa, with which now he looks back without anger. When the eye of the traveler began to fade, He had no choice but to leave, scared at the prospect of no longer being a nomad.

Wandering soul that is precisely the cause of the last to disappointments, his departure from the mainland and nostalgia

"The African Macondo" is a window to that Africa proscribed in the collective imagination, some intense experiences, theirs, which could fill several books more. But the author did not want to use a book, the umpteenth African travelogue. He intended to look out, and he has achieved, the idiosyncrasy of its people and be able to count, with a recognizable narrative structure, a crazy and dreamlike reality that would never draw attention to a «mzungu» settled for years in Africa and yes to whom, As the, It was required to maintain the ability to surprise intact.

I have been fortunate to travel to Africa and hear Javier desgranar, the heat of a fire and in the silence of the savannah, many of the stories that populate this book of women who eat sand, tribal mud, Death without tears and tears without death, girls with guns without dolls, deserts where found and fears that melt as we hold the gaze, of the African Macondo, in the end, where the conventions and cliches that have become blurred are banned to caricature, Western eyes, the African soul.

"The African Macondo" is a window to that Africa proscribed in the collective imagination,

I can not, honestly, but recommend they read Javier, who walk with him the dusty roads of Africa, They are surprised, As the, with the succession of baffling experiences, to laugh with him, to cry with him walking down the imaginary Macondo in the south of the continent battered by stereotypes. Javier speaks of his African experience as "a wonderful defeat" and I rather think that it is a painful victory, that of a guy who loved so intensely Africa ended aching Africa. And we with him.

 

Ricardo Coarasa
 
 
 

The African Macondo, the story of a wonderful defeat

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Comments (6)

  • Monica

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    I love the prologo. I was lucky and fortunate to share some African Javier times and am African mm heart too grew up in the Congo with q understand perfectly the so-called African homesickness

    Answer

  • javier Brandoli

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    thanks Monica. You have nostalgia for the planet anyway, you have you whole tour. 🙂

    Answer

  • Anastasi

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    Why it is not yet in bookstores in Barcelona.
    I've been to Africa and I love all, travel, read, Sound…

    Answer

  • javier Brandoli

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    Hello Anastasi, distribution should have already delivered the books throughout Spain, but in any case where insurance is sold in the bookstore Altair in Barcelona. Greetings

    Answer

  • Altaïr Distribution

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    Hello Anastasi,
    Tell us what zone you live in Barcelona or FREQUENTLY bookstores and tell you where you can find and African Macondo.
    Thanks

    Answer

  • Marcos Rodriguez

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    I just finished The African Macondo and I loved. Highly recommended and very revealing of an Africa that has never. It is very noticeable that the author has lived there. Thank you very much and congratulations for the work you do.

    Answer

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