The Jaguar’s Roar

Brazilian writer Verunschk reckons with her country’s colonial history in her vital English-language debut, which was inspired by the true story of two Indigenous children who were taken to Germany in 1820. The story unfolds from the perspective of Iñe-e, a 12-year-old girl brought to Munich by German naturalists Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and Johann Baptist von Spix along with an unnamed Juri boy. Far from home, Iñe-e feels like she is dying because she can no longer hear the natural world speaking to her, and she and the Juri boy are greeted with dehumanizing curiosity and revulsion by the Bavarian royal court. Then Munich’s Isar river begins speaking to her “incessantly, as all water will,” interspersing stories about German history with spiritual pronouncements (“I know heaven and earth and share the language that flows through all water”). Iñe-e also has visions of a jaguar who beckons her to a new kind of life. It’s often not clear what’s happening, but Verunschk capably renders an animistic experience of the world. Patient readers will appreciate this polyphonic attempt to give voice to the voiceless. (Dec.)