(3.75) First off, this book was written so well that I didn't even immediately notice there are no quotation marks for dialogue which is something that usually bugs me right away. It's also a very immersive tale of the Spanish colonization of North America, and more importantly, of the harm caused by imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy from Mustafa/Estebanico's unique perspective.

It did drag a bit for me in the third quarter of the book, so I think it could've been about 100 pages shorter for maximum effect, but as it's a fictionalization of a historical report made about the Narvaez conquest, there was probably good reason to include as much as Lalami did.