“I celebrate this novel for its sea village textures, its power-driven tides of story and characters, shaped and painted as if they were figures rising up from the buried truths of an ancient ocean and its peoples. The materials are multilayered with whale skin, song names, the breath of brujas and the whispers of old men and widowed women. There is tenderness, transcendence and the voyages into the unknown we all seek to enter and be reborn. Amaworo Wilson’s dexterity, abundant materials, culture lens, and visual genius give us a rare, ground-shaking novel, a tidal wave of prizes.”
—Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate
“Nazaré grabs the reader from the first page and never lets go, bringing us into so many rich and colorful worlds. This brilliant novel will earn JJ Amaworo Wilson a spotlight on the main stage of world fiction.”
—Daniel Chacón, American Book Award winner, author of Kafka in a Skirt
“JJ Amaworo Wilson is a word magician, and Nazaré is an extraordinary and inventive allegory for our time, a kaleidoscopic adventure of epic proportions. Its mighty and potent message is simple and true: evil will ever be defeated by the goodness of great souls.”
—Denise Chávez, American Book Award winner, author of The King and Queen of Comezón and Loving Pedro Infante
“Nazaré brings to mind the work of Jorge Amado, Louis de Bernieres, Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. But it’s no imitation. JJ Amaworo Wilson is a topnotch novelist in his own right. I fell in love with his troubled city, its eclectic characters with their unlikely alliances, comedic turns, bursts of magic, and with the depth and nuance of a community rising against tyranny and corruption.”
—David Anthony Durham, author of The Risen
“Steeped in awe and everyday mysticism, Nazaré captured me with its stunning opening scene, and never let go. It is a story both timeless and urgent, and every passage is alight with humor, ingenuity, and surprise. A singular voice in contemporary fiction, JJ Amaworo Wilson offers readers both an energizing escape and a look at how to live with courage and clarity through absurd times.”
—Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House and Invitation to a Bonfire
“An epic of everywhere. Of autocrats and inequality, of profiteers and their police. But also of revenge and solidarity, of rebels and the righting of wrongs, and of Kin das Ondas—Kin of the Waves—a beach-comber and street urchin turned revolutionary. A luminous novel of the margins and the lumpen and their due.”
—Raymond Craib, author of Adventure Capitalism
“Like the wave that gives it its title, JJ Amaworo Wilson's Nazaré is a high-water mark for fabulist fiction, an exceptional novel that showcases the superior gifts of a writer who only gets better with each new work.”
—Elizabeth Hand, author of Generation Loss and Curious Toys
