Book Review: The Red of His Shadow

'The Red Of His Shadow' is a brand new novel by Mayra Montero written in Spanish and translated into English by Edith Grossman. This is her fourth novel to be translated into English. Her previous works which have been translated into English (again by Edith Grossman) include In the Palm of Darkness, The Messenger & The Last Night I Spent With You. Cuban born Montero is one of biggest post-boom generation writers from Latin America. And all her works including this one are brilliant representations of the Latin American lifes of the poor and the downtrodden. Much like the poverty stricken streets of rural India, people in this part of the world are also plagued by heat, rodents, illicit liquour and a range of superstitions.

The Red of His Shadow is a breathtaking novel, a contemporary love story with the power of a Greek tragedy that takes the reader deep into the mysterious world of Haitian Voudon or Voodoo. This enamouring world of occult is so strange, yet pretty close to the 'Tantrik' and 'Baba' ways of Indian quackdom. The disturbing tale is inspired from the true and tragic love story of Simil Bolosse and Mistress Zule, the leaders of two warring factions or gagas or voodoo societies. Bordering on the bizarre, we read about black magic ceremonies where one leader bathes in the blood of more than 100 goats to see the other leader dead. The story also touches upon the miserable plight of the downtrodden Haitian immigrants who work in the sugar-cane fields of the Dominican Republic. Each year, tens of thousands of Haitians cross into the Dominican Republic to work as cane cutters, where they are subjected to the most pathetic working conditions patterned after the cruelest slave regimes. Because of their miserable plight, which remains till the end of their days, the workers have no recourse but to cling to their religious beliefs, imagining of some day of freedom. Out of this blind faith, builds forth groups called 'Societes' and gradually many societes congregate into the Gaga: a form of worship, a dedicated guild that few can penetrate. Led by powerful "Masters" or "Queens", the Gaga takes out its annual procession or pilgrimage through the fields that surround the sugar mill. This journey, marked by ritual stopping points, lasts for three days starting on Good Friday and ending on Easter Sunday. Frequently one Gaga crosses paths with another Gaga. The encounter can be absolutely cordial or extremely bloody. This book describes different events and lives leading upto the culmination with the crossing of paths between two warring Gagas led by Mistress Zule and Simil Bolosse. To help the readers understand the story well, and to represent the different routes that the voodoo procession takes through the country side of the Dominican Republic, there is also a map of the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti at the start of the book.

Where Montero brilliantly succeeds with this story are her extremely strong characters. The book begins with Zule Reve, the young mambo or priestess of one of the Gagas. At the age of 12, Zule, the wild and willful only surviving daughter of a cursed family, is anointed mambo, or priestess, of a powerful Dominican Voudon community and undergoes a seven-year apprenticeship to gain her position as a Mambo. Jeremie Cande, her loyal right-hand man is a mixed breed, a Haitian "China man", who remains tied to Zule as her protector, servant, a lover spurned but still hopelessly in love and consumed with jealousy. Anacaona is a Dominican woman living among the Haitians, a rare occurrence in a society where scorn and hatred for Dominicans has been built into the Haitian mindset since Dominicans wrested themselves free of Haitian rule in 1844. And finally there's Simila Bolosse, a Haitian renegade once Zule's lover and now her enemy, who has pledged to cut her to pieces if she refuses to join forces with him. As these characters circle and confront each other, Montero portrays a terrifying world poisoned by hate, greed, and sexual jealously, in which people cast spells to torture and kill, and, where the capricious gods, mount, or possess, their worshippers to enact bloody dramas of their own.

Essentially the story is that of love lost turned sour turned into political rivalry between two very powerful individuals. In illustrating the story thus, Montero writes with fire and acid. With Haitian poems that speak of love, lust and revenge. And thankfully without any kind of helpful or instructive or redemptive Christian-influenced finale. It's a ripping read, which most books that cut across cultures are not, and the story is seductive and glorious. The ending is blunt: It may not leave you satisfied, but it will certainly shock you.