Master of the Sea

By José Sarney

En esta novela, mezcla de leyenda y realidad, Jos Sarney (1930) evoca con talento la atm sfera del noreste de Brasil: personas de pasiones primitivas, los pescadores de Maranhao rodean al h roe Crist... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970765274
• ISBN13: 9780970765277
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Alliform Publishing
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

well crafted

"Not Cristorio, Captain Cristorio! From today on I want to be addressed like that: captain, Captain Cristrorio. I got my papers last night at sea." These are the words of Antao Cristorio, an everyman, a fisherman, a master of the sea, and the major character in Jose Sarney's new book Master of the Sea, translated by Gregory Rabassa. Master of the Sea is an interesting novel that reads more like a screenplay. It shows a reminiscence of Homer in that it is an epic story of sea myths following the mortal life of Antao Cristorio, a Brazilian fisherman who sails the Chita Verde between the Archipelagos Islands and the phantom world. Written by Jose Sarney, the former President of Brazil from 1985 to 1990, Master of the Sea chronicles the rich nautical history of the region incorporating many local myths and legions. Cristorio is awaken one night with the news that his son has been murdered and from this point on the book flashes back to the beginning of Cristorio's life on the sea. His fiancée Maria Quertide is captured by the mythical pioco, who steal young virgins from beaches and rob them of their virginity before returning them to their villages with no recollection of having been taken. Except the pioco never return Quertide and Cristorio spends the rest of his life trying to recover his lost love. This novel has many interesting characters that hover between the living world and the phantom world, he most evident of which is Querente. He is, according to the Table of Characters found in the appendix, a "companion of Antao Cristorio, incarnation of Diogo de Seixas, a soldier thrown into the sea from the ship Sao Tome off the coast of the Land of Smoke in 1589." Querente is for the lay reader a Jack Sparow (Pirates of the Caribian) type character that guides Cristorio amongst the phantoms and spooks he encounters on many fishing trips. Querente is a symbol of youth and vigor as he never ages and "dies" after each sexual encounter. The two most striking things about this novel is the intense use of symbolic imagery and its graphic sexual nature. It is the kind of novel a third year lit student could tear into for a ten page essay on Sarney's use of the color green or for the age old man vs. nature comparative. What lies beneath this meandering yarn is a somewhat disturbing use of female characters. Cristorio, views all women as objects; things that he has in his possession or things he can use to further himself. At one point, he even has sex with his boat. The boat, like a few other of Cristorio's women , kills itself after it is no longer deemed useful. In the end Cristorio is not the master he knows himself to be but a mere mortal grappling to control things that are beyond his control. Master of the Sea is very well written but not by any means light reading. The novel takes its reader to place that they don't necessarily want to go but is so well crafted that it is hard to find an intelligent reason to fault it. It is the kind