Anticolonial 
 In 1626, the Spanish explorer Panfilo de Narvaez landed in Tampa Bay with six hundred men to claim La Florida for His Catholic Majesty. Through a combination of misfortune and bad leadership, the party was split up, hounded by hostile Indians, decimated by disease, and forced to take to improvised rafts in search of a friendly port. After coming ashore at Galveston Island and remaining there for some years, the survivors then set out on an epic march through Texas and Arizona, crossing the cordillera and going down the west coast to finally reach their compatriots in Mexico City eight years later. Of the six hundred, only four survived: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote a celebrated history of the ordeal, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes de Carranza, and "his enslaved Moor Estebanico." Laila Lalami, who was born in Morocco herself, is interested in the last of these, wondering how the actions of the Spanish colonists must have seemed through the eyes of her fictionalized African protagonist. 
 It is a good story, well told, but it has two quite different audiences. Estebanico (proudly named Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori before his forced baptism), is writing a "minority opinion" to set against the account by Cabeza de Vaca. It therefore has a special meaning for those who know the official history, who would be enraged or delighted to see the boasts of heroic deeds counteracted by tales of a much less admirable nature. But for those who, like me, do not know the story, Lalami must simultaneously recount the facts and show them through the Moor's eyes. She does this by placing emphasis on all the most arrogant acts of the conquerors: the reading to the empty forest upon landing of the formal Requerimiento declaring the land the property of the King of Spain; the brutal torture of four captured Indians whom they hope to use as guides, on the assumption that Indians are not to be trusted otherwise; the obsession with finding gold to equal that of Moctezuma--Narvaez's envy of the more successful Cortez is a large part of his motivation. 
 I was enjoying the book quite a bit, but had no difficulty putting it down when a more interesting novel arrived; unfortunately, it no longer had the same grip on me when I resumed. The first half was powerful but intermittent. Lalami alternates the Florida chapters with others showing Mustafa's birth, education, early success, and the circumstances that led to his slavery. I did not enjoy these so much, but they made the scenes in Florida that much more vivid. I returned for the second half, which is much simpler, the story of a long trek and feat of endurance. Although Mustafa gradually begins to carve out a new destiny for himself in the New World, the rest of the account becomes something of a slog. But parts of it are very good, the history is fascinating, and the sympathetic protagonist has the beautiful last words.