The enthralling storyline of Under the Frangipani kept me turning the pages wanting to find out what is next. Mia Couto’s idea of intertwining African traditions within the western world is brilliant, for in the novel the African world is exposed to us by the spirit Ermelindo Mucanga who returns from the dead and resides in a police inspector, Izidine Naíta who is investigating a murder.

Old people who live in a former Portuguese fort who are suspects to the murder all claim to have killed the victim. The police inspector struggles to understand the old people’s confessions because they speak in a way he does not know and he does not fully understand the traditional ways of the past.

Characters like Little Miss No assumed to be a witch who at night transforms into water and Navaia Caetano an ‘old-boy’ are characters Couto strangely places in the police inspector’s path to unravel the murder case but it also helps in unravelling another murder between past and present.

Review by: Astrid, Images: Africanlife

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