A review by mg_in_md_
The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami

5.0

This review is based on the FirstReads copy I was lucky enough to win. Based on the ill-fated 1527 expedition of Spanish explorer Pánfilo de Narvaez, the book is told from the perspective of an educated Moroccan Muslim slave who is one of only four crew members to survive a year after arriving in the New World. Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori recounts his life and travels from the city of Azemmur to the Land of the Indians. Mustafa, who is called Estebanico by the Spaniards, survives a shipwreck, disease, fighting with hostile tribes, starvation, storms, and enslavement, and travels for 8 years from Florida to Mexico where he and his fellow survivors are reunited with Spanish colonists they struggle to relate to. He experiences love and loss, and continually seeks a way to secure his freedom to return to his beloved Azemmur and the family he left behind. The writing evokes the oral storytelling tradition while presenting an alternative perspective to history, with each chapter focusing on a particular event in Mustafa's life. The book was incredibly well-researched and felt as if it was a real memoir written by an early explorer. It would have been helpful to have either a map or a legend of some sort to equate the place names used to locations today. I appreciated the author's note, which included many of the sources she used and plan to check out the full bibliography on her website since this book rekindled my interest in this period of history. Thanks again to the FirstReads program for another phenomenal offering!