War seems to be the common theme the last couple of weeks and it is no different as this story takes place during the Angolan Civil War. However, this book tries to find the best out of this horrible situation by creating a dreamlike landscape and beautiful imagery to make this situation a little tolerable for us readers and the characters involved. Daniel Benchimol just like Cercas was going through a big slump in his life with divorce, no job, and the constant horrors of his environment. However, Daniel took it one step further by completely utilizing the dream world entirely as his source of escape. The connections between his fantasy place and reality were really entertaining to read and the back and forth really got me invested, especially when Daniel’s daughter showed up. That entire turmoil throughout the novel gave way to many important themes that were correlated very well between both worlds. That theme I think involved the chaos and pain that the war produced, and it even was present in Daniel’s dreams as well. The theme of fear was also very present and it was the major driving force for Daniel and his friends to realize that ambitious dreamers and people who revolt and strive for change are fighting for the same cause in some way. Of course, that been said, it also took some disconnecting on both worlds as it felt like Daniel was constantly stuck in reality because of the daughter’s actions that his fantasy world becomes fuzzy and vice versa.
I was a huge fan of the dream concept here in this book as I consider myself a constant dreamer. Whether I sleep at night or daydream by day or when random ideas pop into my head, I just get caught up in my fantasy world. It is very beautiful and how Agualusa utilized that to further tell the history of the Angolan wars was a fresh take that kept me wanting to keep reading. It is quite difficult to want to go back in history especially if it was war-torn because most of the memories are horrendous and ugly. But how did Agualusa manage to share those brutal sides of history and incorporate them into a story of truth and fiction via the dreamworld is astonishing and amazing all around?
My question for this week is how do your dreams/daydreams connect with your everyday life? Are dreams all fantasy or are there hidden agendas?
Xyrus Ramos
2 Comments
Hi John,
The dream concept, as you mentioned, was something I found interesting as well. The entire story appears to hinge on the daydreaming of Daniel, as without him there is no personal perspective for the Angolan wars, only cold political facts. Additionally, the confluence of personal narrative and history was just as impressive.
Hi John! I definitely get caught up in daydreams a lot as well. For me, I imagine that all dreams have some kind of hidden agenda but it’s not really obvious to me what they are. For example, when Hossi first appeared in everyone’s dreams in the place he was staying, I thought that the reason he wasn’t significantly altering anyone’s dreams was because his being there contributed to the dreams’ narratives, but by the end, everyone was informed of the same agenda.