The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami

Published 2013 · 323 pages · 126,266 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · literary fiction, historical fiction, postcolonial fiction, adventure

How hard is The Moor's Account to read?

The Moor's Account scores 59 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
The text blends historical terms (Hegira, Castilians, armada, ducats, maravedis), specialized nautical/colonial vocabulary (hardtack, brigantine, arrobas, caravel, cavalgadas), and Arabic loanwords (souqs, jellaba, fqih, msid, guenbri, shari'a, jinns, Ramatullai, Azemmur). While context often clarifies, the sheer volume of such terms, combined with detailed descriptions of unfamiliar flora, fauna, and cultural practices, demands a higher vocabulary engagement from the reader. It sits above '2666' in its specific historical/cultural lexicon, but below 'Moby-Dick' due to less pervasive technical jargon.
Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
The narrative generally employs clear, well-structured sentences, but frequently incorporates multiple clauses and descriptive phrases, particularly in the narrator's reflections and detailed observations. While not reaching the extreme hypotaxis of James or Proust, sentences can be long and dense, requiring careful attention to follow the flow of information and the narrator's internal monologue. The prose is more demanding than 'The Great Gatsby' but less labyrinthine than '2666'.
Abstraction: 62 out of 100
The novel is primarily a concrete historical narrative, detailing the physical hardships and brutal realities of the Narváez expedition and the narrator's enslavement. However, it frequently elevates to philosophical and existential reflections on freedom, fate, identity, and the nature of truth, particularly through the narrator's internal monologues and his mother's stories. This blend places it above 'The Great Gatsby' in its explicit philosophical engagement, but below '2666' or 'Brothers Karamazov' where philosophical debates often drive the plot.
Information density: 68 out of 100
The text is rich with historical, cultural, and sensory details, presenting a dense tapestry of the narrator's experiences and observations. It interweaves multiple plotlines (the expedition, the narrator's past, his family's fate, the lives of other slaves) and introduces numerous characters and their motivations, demanding sustained attention to track the complex interplay of events and personal reflections. This density is higher than 'Lolita' due to the historical scope and moral weight, but not as overwhelming as 'War and Peace' or 'Ulysses'.
Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
Mustafa's narration is highly reflective and often explicitly states his interpretations of events, such as when he observes the Spanish believing their own pronouncements or critiques their motivations. While his perspective is subjective and evolves, he rarely leaves the reader to infer meaning without his guiding commentary or internal thought process. This directness places it closer to *1984* than to narratives requiring constant reading against an unreliable narrator.
Symbolic density: 70 out of 100
The text is rich with recurring motifs and symbols that carry meaning beyond literal events. The loss and renaming of Mustafa's identity, the Spanish renaming of places, the pursuit of gold as a symbol of colonial greed, and the pervasive presence of water as a symbol of fate and transition all contribute to a layered symbolic landscape. The narrative's structure as a series of 'Stories of...' also elevates the act of storytelling itself to a symbolic level.
Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
The narrative features clear ironic observations, often articulated directly by Mustafa, such as his reflections on the Spanish 'creating' truth through speeches or Governor Narváez's metaphorical blindness. While there is a gap between the colonizers' self-perception and their actions, Mustafa's explicit commentary on these ironies reduces the need for the reader to infer a subtle, authorial critique. This makes the ironic distance less about hidden meaning and more about the narrator's stated critical perspective.
Resolution withholding: 70 out of 100
The excerpt concludes with Mustafa and the expedition sailing into the unknown on makeshift rafts, with the destination and their ultimate survival highly uncertain. Mustafa's personal dream of freedom remains a 'feverish dream,' leaving the immediate plot unresolved and the future of the characters ambiguous. This significant lack of closure for the expedition's fate creates a strong sense of resolution withholding, similar to the open-endedness of *Crying of Lot 49*.
Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
The narrative employs a first-person retrospective account, structured into distinct chapters titled 'The Story of My Birth,' 'The Story of Azemmur,' etc., which function as extended flashbacks. While these shifts in time provide context and deepen character, they are clearly demarcated and integrated, maintaining a consistent narrative voice and avoiding disorienting formal experiments or multiple, conflicting perspectives. This is more complex than a purely linear narrative but less so than highly fragmented or experimental works like *Flights*.

How The Moor's Account is regarded

The Moor's Account holds a literary regard score of 55 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where The Moor's Account sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (221 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Moor's Account scores 72 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
I am a slave now, I told myself, I am not one of them. I cannot interfere in matters between the Spaniards and the Indians.
Symbol: Formal
Nothing new has ever happened to a son of Adam, she said. Everything has already been lived and everything has already been told.
Mythos: Irony iv (irony iv)
It was slowly dawning upon all of us that Apalache had no gold and there would be no glory.
Genre: Confession + Novel
This book is the humble work of Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, being a true account of his life and travels

Where the story of The Moor's Account takes place

  • Spanish Florida and the American Southwest, 1527 to 1536, the main setting
  • Azemmur under Portuguese vassalage, Mustafa's birth to his sale, 1497-1522 (1497 to 1522)
  • Seville, slavery in the Rodriguez household, 1522-1527 (1522 to 1527)
  • La Florida and the Gulf coast to the Land of Corn, Narváez expedition and its aftermath, 1528-1536 (1528 to 1536)
  • New Spain: Culiacán, Compostela and Tenochtitlán, 1536-1539 (1536 to 1539)
  • Hawikuh, Zuni country, 1539

5 things that are true of The Moor's Account, with the passage for each

  1. Mustafa is born on a ferry barge crossing the Umm er-Rbi' River while his father bleeds from a Portuguese sword wound.

    So it was that she pushed me out into the world, on the barge that carried her from one bank to the other, my father bleeding by her side.

  2. Mustafa sells himself into slavery in Azemmur for fifteen reais.

    Mustafa. Fifteen reais.

  3. The expedition's supposedly golden capital Apalache turns out to have only fifty houses.

    It had fifty houses.

  4. The party of healers grows from twelve people to twelve hundred followers.

    Over the next year, so many people wanted to join our traveling band that our numbers swelled from just twelve souls to twelve hundred.

  5. Mustafa's escape plan is to have the Zunis tell Father Marco that they killed him.

    Send a group of men, some bearing injuries of battle, to Vacapa.

Scenes in The Moor's Account that Frye would name

59 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
It was slowly dawning upon all of us that Apalache had no gold and there would be no glory. The expedition's dream is discovered to be a lie.
Hamartia, untitled
I opened my mouth, but instead of an admonition to release these men from bondage, out came a price. Mustafa's own fatal misstep: selling slaves.
Sparagmos, untitled
After we went away, Palacios became sick with the bowel disease and died. Cannibalism among the stranded soldiers, bodies literally torn apart.
Pathos, untitled
Diego’s gentle soul left his body within moments, right before our eyes. The innocent brother's killing is the book's chief sacrificial death.
Eiron, untitled
Don Nuño, as you yourself said, I am merely a slave. Whoever heard of a slave who can read or write, much less draw maps? Mustafa feigns ignorance to withhold the map from Guzmán.
Eiron, untitled
Send a group of men, some bearing injuries of battle, to Vacapa. The staged death is the eiron's final unravelling of the empire's plot.

Books that share these scenes with The Moor's Account

About the author

Laila Lalami