“The child’s gaze in a hard world.”
“A harrowing history, like Lennart Bromander as read Kayo Mpoyis debut novel”
“LITERATURE. The experience bank, which the Swedish debutromaner is based, thanks to the large immigration expanded tremendously in the last few decades. It is a highly gratifying and encouraging fact for Swedish literature. “
“Kayo Mpoyi, with a background in the Congo, and Tanzania, tells us in his first novel, Mai means water on the Adi, which is between six and nine years when the novel is set in the years around 1990. Or rather, it is the little girl herself who tells you; everything is seen from her perspective. She is kongoles, but the novel takes place in Tanzania, where his father works at the congolese embassy.”
“Adi has a long line of siblings and also a present family tree backwards in time, which is still playing with in the form of curses and injustices. Not least the name Mai is sensitive. It wont go bad for them in the family, which is endowed with the name, and now Adis sickly little sister named Mai in the hope that the curse can be broken.”
“this is no happy family. The father has worked his way up from difficult circumstances and are extremely concerned about their children’s education. It will literally inhamras in them through the tough disciplining. Adis tanzanian school is also hard, repressive, and both her parents are strictly christian, of the kind that uses religion as a power and coercive measures.”
“nTre of the older children to sleep away the oppression, and one of them gives birth to a child and Adas secretly gay big brother trying to escape to Europe. If he manages to survive the Mediterranean sea, we shall never know for sure. What is left is Adi and may, among other things, experience sexual abuse by a neighbor and the father dunks her head into a table so hard, that it will have long-lasting consequences; nioåringen have, namely, from its everything else than child-friendly school received the grade to be a ”lost woman”.”
“It is not a pleasant one world Adi grows up in, but Kayo Mpoyi has in an admirable way managed to avoid making the novel a eländesskildring or any kind of anklagelseakt. We see the events with Adis oförvillade perspective, at the same time that the adult reader gets the chance to understand a lot of that escapes the Adi. Kayo Mpoyi succeed nicely with the difficult balance to tell from the child’s perspective.”
“She joins also in stories and myths from the family’s past, not only around the dangerous the name Mai. The colonial history is obviously over the head of the girl, but the oozing still. The congo is by belgarnas beastly reign of terror to Africa’s worst-hit countries, and the experience is also available in the family history.”
“it is a harrowing story Kayo Mpoyi tell, and obviously it is very in the that in any form is autobiographical. How Adis any alter ego ended up in Sweden and writes in Swedish, I have no idea. The novel ends in the middle of without any resolution, and we must not at all know ”how it went”. “
“Possibly like Kayo Mpoyi that this is a different story and she can have all the right in the. But you wonder anyway.”
