The Moor's Account: A Novel

"Forgotten history is the bedrock of The Moor’s Account, which imagines the life of the first African explorer of the Americas, a Moroccan slave who survived the disastrous Narváez expedition of 1528. Author Laila Lalami uses historical record to frame the life of Mustafa al-Zamori, who sells himself into slavery and finds himself caught up in world-changing events. The novel, structured like an Arabic travelogue, is told in dreamlike prose that builds in a grim, leisurely parallel, as what Mustafa knows and what we know come ever closer to a dreadful vanishing point."