Birthdate: 1955
Gender: female
Nationality: Mozambique
Country (for map): Mozambique
Education: Eduardo Mondlane University
Short biography: Paulina Chiziane è nata a Manjacaze, nel sud del Mozambico, nel 1955. Durante la guerra civile ha collaborato con la Croce Rossa Internazionale in alcune delle zone più colpite dal conflitto e attualmente lavora per conto di organizzazioni internazionali in Zambesia. Nel 1990 ha pubblicato Balada de Amor ao Vento , diventando così la prima donna mozambicana a scrivere un romanzo. Grazie a opere come Ventos do Apocalipse e Il settimo giuramento , si è presto imposta come una delle voci più intense e originali del panorama letterario in lingua portoghese e come una delle più significative esponenti della nuova letteratura africana. Con Niketche. Una storia di poligamia ha vinto il prestigioso premio "José Craveirinha", assegnato dalla Associazione degli Scrittori Mozambicani, al miglior romanzo dell'anno. Le sue opere sono state tradotte in molte lingue, tra cui il francese, lo spagnolo e il tedesco.

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Niketche (Nova edição): Uma História de Poligamia. by Paulina Chiziane

Um dos romances moçambicanos mais renomados do século XX, agora em edição de bolso.
Da vencedora do Prêmio Camões 2021.

Rami é uma esposa fiel e subserviente. Ela faz o que manda a tradição, mas nem assim consegue ser amada por Tony, com quem é casada há vinte anos. Certo dia, Rami descobre que o marido tem várias amantes ― e filhos ― por todo o Moçambique, e decide conhecê-las uma a uma. “Eu, Rami, sou a primeira-dama, a rainha mãe. […] O nosso lar é um polígono de seis pontos. É polígamo. Um hexágono amoroso”, diz. A partir desse encontro surpreendente, todas terão suas vidas completamente transformadas.
De origem humilde, Paulina Chiziane foi a primeira mulher moçambicana a publicar um romance ― apesar de não se considerar romancista, mas uma contadora de histórias. Em Niketche, ela mistura bom humor, consciência social e lirismo para traçar um vigoroso painel da condição feminina e da sociedade de seu país.… (more)

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Camargos_livros | 9 other reviews | Aug 30, 2023 |

The first wife by Paulina Chiziane

Rami and Tony have been married for twenty years and have five children. He is a senior police officer, and they live comfortably, if not extravagantly, in Maputo, Mozambique. Lately he has been working late and is often absent when Rami needs him. Soon she discovers that he has a mistress of long-standing, and she goes to confront this other woman. Julieta also has five children with Tony and is pregnant with her sixth. At first the women come to fisticuffs, but eventually realize that they have both been betrayed, for Tony has more families stashed around the city. Rami, as first wife, decides to bring the women together for mutual support and to organize this haphazard polygamous marriage into a more traditional form that grants the women some rights.

Although it took me a while to get used to the author's writing style, the plot was a page-turner from the beginning. Rami's struggle to come to terms with her husband's infidelity, and her fight for not only her rights, but the rights of all her husband's wives, is at once universal and unique. The author writes from a strong feminist perspective, but with an acknowledgment of regional differences, the influence of tradition, and the legacy of colonialism. Recommended for anyone interested in gender politics, the lives of women in Mozambique, or simply a poignant, funny satire set in Africa.… (more)

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labfs39 | 9 other reviews | Feb 19, 2023 |

Niketche : uma história de poligamia : romance by Paulina Chiziane

Rami is a very ordinary 21st century middle-aged, middle-class housewife: convent-educated, with five kids, a nice house in Maputo, and a husband, Tony, who has made a very successful career in the police force. But she isn't happy: Tony has been neglecting her somewhat, and often only seems to be using the family home as a place to take baths and change his clothes. Women-friends advise her to win her husband back by taking courses in erotic practices or by consulting witches, but that doesn't get her anywhere. When she investigates where Tony is actually spending his time, she's alarmed to discover that as well as his legal household with her, he has been maintaining four other unofficial wives scattered around the city, each with a house and children.

Chiziane follows Rami through the process of developing a conscious understanding of the role she and her "rivals" have been manipulated into playing in Mozambican society, where there is a gender-imbalance caused by war and migration, as well as complicated intersections of traditional Bantu culture and colonialist Catholic ideas under a surface coating of FRELIMO Marxism, and the other, older, set of collisions between the largely matriarchal traditions in the north of the country and the more patriarchal culture of the south.

Rami gets together with the other women to take control of their own lives, gaining economic independence with the help of a mutual microcredit scheme and gradually manoeuvring Tony into a position where he becomes aware of the harm he has done through his irresponsible actions and his reliance on the principle of male infallibility.

There's a lot of politics and sociology to get through here, but it's presented very lightly, in the framework of a story that is effectively a romantic comedy, albeit one that doesn't try to conceal the very real oppression and suffering that is going on as a result of the way women are treated in contemporary African society. Chiziane is extremely good at what she does, there are lively characters who never descend into stereotypes, there is clever, funny dialogue, and there are some glorious angry rants and poetic excursions — altogether a very interesting and enjoyable book.… (more)