The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST

In these pages, Laila Lalami brings us the invented memoirs Mustafa al-Zamori, called Estebanico. The slave of a Spanish conquistador, Estebanico sails for the Americas with his master, Dorantes, as part of a danger-laden expedition to Florida. Within a year, Estebanico is one of only four crew members to survive.

As he journeys across America with his Spanish companions, the Old World roles of slave and master fall away, and Estebanico remakes himself as an equal, a healer, and a remarkable storyteller. His tale illuminates the ways in which our narratives can transmigrate into history—and how storytelling can offer a chance at redemption and survival.

REVIEWS

“An exciting tale of wild hopes, divided loyalties, and highly precarious fortunes.” —The New Yorker

“An absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth.” —Salman Rushdie

“Stunning. . . . The Moor’s Account sheds light on all of the possible the New World exploration stories that didn’t make history.” —Huffington Post
 
“Lalami has once again shown why she is one of her generation’s most gifted writers.” —Reza Aslan, author of Zealot

“Compelling. . . . Necessary. . . . Laila Lalami’s mesmerizing The Moor’s Account presents us a historical fiction that feels something like a plural totality . . . a narrative that braids points of view so intricately that they become one even as we’re constantly reminded of the separate and often contrary strands that render the whole.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978-1526650153
Pages: 336