Dumba Nengue: Run for Your Life, Peasant Tales of Tragedy in Mozambique

From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
"And I heard it being said that there was civil war in Mozambique. Civil war!? What is civil war? Wars, whether civil or not, are waged between armed contingents. That's not what's happening in Mozambique. There's no civil war in Mozambique. In Mozambique there is genocide perpetrated by armed men against defenseless populations. Against peasants." These true accounts are Lina Magaia's attempt to bring to an international public the reality of rural life in her country, where people are terrorized by the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR), a group with clear ties to the South African apartheid regime and ex-colonialists now in Portugal. While the MNR is often represented as "freedom fighters" in the American and British press, Lina Magaia's refutation is deadly clear. The events she relates are horrific and gut-wrenching. The stories vary in style; sometimes they are short and shocking as an axe to the neck, sometimes they are drawn out like a keening wail. Still others start out slowly - telling the reader about the beauty of what one woman has been able to produce from the land, or the love between a young couple - only to end up with a brutal description of total, barbaric destruction. This is not a book for the weak of heart; it is easier to pretend such things do not exist. But they do, and Lina Magaia's book makes closing one's eyes impossible. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

Language Notes
Text: English, Portugese (translation)


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