Le Monde (France) on Manituana

The Parisian newspaper reviewed our novel on 27 August 2009

Manituana: With the Mohawks, history told from the side of the defeated

by Fabio Gambaro

Wu Ming loves the history of the defeated, especially its least known pages. The amazing Italian collective (five authors hiding behind a chinese alias that means “without a name” or “five names” according to pronunciation) already proved it with Q, a sort of adventurous crime novel on the backdrop of 16th century peasant revolts.
Now they confirm their taste by publishing Manituana, a rich, flourishing novel dealing with a key moment in the birth of the American nation. In the second half of the 18th century, after having fought the French, English settlers decided to separate from the British Crown. Wu Ming tell us this troubled story from the point of view of Mohawk indians, those free and brave spirits who paid for the war of independence by losing their lands. Along with other Iroquois nations in the northern borderlands, they chose “the wrong side of history”, the side of losers, in this case the English who remained faithful to king George III.
Grounding their story on real characters and facts, always with great care for context and detail, the five authors adopt a very effective montage to evoke the events that, from 1775 to 1779, brought war and destruction to [the land] where the Mohawks had lived in peace and established fruitful relationships with white settlers. The main characters of the novel are often half-breeds balancing between two worlds and two cultures, like Joseph Brant Thayendanegea, the Mohawk interpreter and war chief, or Philip Lacroix Ronaterihonte, a legendary warrior and reader of Shakespeare's works. And let's not forget Peter Johnson, the son of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Molly Brant, the Indian woman with supernatural powers. They will fight with both intelligence and ferociousness, trying to save their freedom and their land. They will even venture to the other shore of the Atlantic, to London, to make their voices heard by the King and English society.
In the pages written by the Italian collective – to whom the writer is an “artisan of narration” dealing with collective creation and re-elaboration of mythologies – history is never simple nor reducible to pre-fixed schemes. Manituana, a book that miscegenates and successfully reinvents both historical novel and adventurous romance, does not depict “good indians” on one side and “evil whites” on the other. Reality is much more complex and tangled, and every character has gloomy facets, weaknesses and contradictions. No-one is neither completely innocent nor completely guilty, and one's legitimate battle for liberty and independence may bring about the loss of someone else's independence and liberty. Which adds even more strength and significance to this tragic epic on the disappearance of a world and the birth of another.

31.08.09 · on recensioni