Nazaré: the great wave. Kin, an orphan scavenger in the Fishing Village with No Name, finds a stranded whale on the beach and tries to return it to the ocean. His efforts attract the attention of Mayor Matanza and his bloodthirsty police, the Tonto Macoute, and Kin must leave the only home he’s ever known. His journeys take him to an abandoned lighthouse, through singing caves and brutal deserts, and finally to a village of warrior historians.
There he meets the Professor and others who are preparing to overthrow Matanza. They are joined by Jesa, a woman from Kin’s village who might be a witch, and the nun Iquique. Their revolution is unlike any other, fought by tinkers and miners, monks and acrobats, clairvoyants in bowler hats, a painted saint, the King of the Rats, and a giant turtle named Abacaxi. The holy man Fundogu once told Kin, “You will do battle with monsters and you will do battle with men.” As Fundogu’s prophecy takes shape around him, Kin remembers another of Fundogu’s sayings: “Everything begins and ends in the sea”
Book details:
Author: JJ Amaworo Wilson
Series: PM Press/Spectacular Fiction
ISBN: 9781629639086/9781629639208
Published: 11/9/2021
Format: Paperback
Size: 5×8
Pages: 320
Subjects: Fiction / Dystopian / Magical Realism
Praise
- “I celebrate this novel for its sea village textures, its power-driven tides of story and characters, shaped and painted as if they were figures rising up from the buried truths of an ancient ocean and its peoples. The materials are multilayered with whale skin, song names, the breath of brujas and the whispers of old men and widowed women. There is tenderness, transcendence and the voyages into the unknown we all seek to enter and be reborn. Amaworo Wilson’s dexterity, abundant materials, culture lens, and visual genius give us a rare, ground-shaking novel, a tidal wave of prizes.”
—Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate - “Nazaré grabs the reader from the first page and never lets go, bringing us into so many rich and colorful worlds. This brilliant novel will earn JJ Amaworo Wilson a spotlight on the main stage of world fiction.”
—Daniel Chacón, American Book Award winner, author of Kafka in a Skirt - “JJ Amaworo Wilson is a word magician, and Nazaré is an extraordinary and inventive allegory for our time, a kaleidoscopic adventure of epic proportions. Its mighty and potent message is simple and true: evil will ever be defeated by the goodness of great souls.”
—Denise Chávez, American Book Award winner, author of The King and Queen of Comezón and Loving Pedro Infante - “Nazaré brings to mind the work of Jorge Amado, Louis de Bernieres, Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. But it’s no imitation. JJ Amaworo Wilson is a topnotch novelist in his own right. I fell in love with his troubled city, its eclectic characters with their unlikely alliances, comedic turns, bursts of magic, and with the depth and nuance of a community rising against tyranny and corruption.”
—David Anthony Durham, author of The Risen - “Steeped in awe and everyday mysticism, Nazaré captured me with its stunning opening scene, and never let go. It is a story both timeless and urgent, and every passage is alight with humor, ingenuity, and surprise. A singular voice in contemporary fiction, JJ Amaworo Wilson offers readers both an energizing escape and a look at how to live with courage and clarity through absurd times.”
—Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House and Invitation to a Bonfire - “An epic of everywhere. Of autocrats and inequality, of profiteers and their police. But also of revenge and solidarity, of rebels and the righting of wrongs, and of Kin das Ondas—Kin of the Waves—a beach-comber and street urchin turned revolutionary. A luminous novel of the margins and the lumpen and their due.”
—Raymond Craib, author of Adventure Capitalism - “Like the wave that gives it its title, JJ Amaworo Wilson’s Nazaré is a high-water mark for fabulist fiction, an exceptional novel that showcases the superior gifts of a writer who only gets better with each new work.”
—Elizabeth Hand, author of Generation Loss and Curious Toys
About the Author
- JJ Amaworo Wilson is a German-born Anglo-Nigerian-American writer. His 2016 novel, Damnificados, won three international awards, was an Oprah Top 10 pick, and has since been translated into French and German. His work has appeared in African American Journal, Justice Journal, The Penguin Book of New Black Writing, and many other publications. He is currently the writer-in-residence at Western New Mexico University.
