The Merry Song of the Partridge by the Mozambican tutor Pulina Cheziane is a book that captivates from the first page despite the complex themes it addresses. In this, topics such as raciality, colonialism and sexuality are addressed from the particular vision of a black African author. With a narrative divided into several times, it gives us a reflection of the idiosyncrasy of many indigenous peoples of the black continent while at the same time it shows without fear the deep traces that colonialism leaves even in the collective imagination.
The story she tells is already captivating, sometimes told in the form of an oral narrative, conveying that air of mysticism and nostalgia that surrounds it. Its protagonist, a racialized woman, mutates between the different classes that her society has to offer from the lowest to the highest, touching in a certain way each of these ways of life and how they influence the protagonist's thinking, turning her into a living portrait of all sectors of the society in which it operates.
Although we could not speak of a circular development, we are apparently talking about a story that shows the consecutivity of the events and its very human characters within a large circle from which they find no way to escape. The great collection of its characters presents a remarkable richness, they have unique features but they make up a great cosmogony where all of them present lights and shadows, as well as the human condition itself so present in the work.
Without a doubt, the cheerful Song of the Partridge is a fascinating book for anyone who is seeking to break the canons of traditional narrative and wants to enter a book told from a different perspective. Pulina Cheziane, considered the first novelist in the country, with this book she dares to say what many people know and suffer from their reality and the past, but everyone remains silent.
