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Palm Trees in the Snow by Luz Gabas: book review



Palm Trees in the Snow (2012, English version 2017) is set in Pasolobino and Madrid, Spain, and Bioko island, Equatorial Guinea, from 1953 to 2004.

After 18 years, ‘tonight you both will love with desperation because you know it is going to be the last night you spend together. Never again will you see each other.’ There will not be tears. ‘You’re as strong as a ceiba and as flexible as a royal palm,’ she says as you leave.

It begins in 2003 as Clarence is sorting through letters – she is piecing together the life of her uncle Kilian from 1953. There were fewer letters from her father Jacobo. ‘She was … the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of colonists. From that moment on, a curiosity had risen inside her for everything to do with the lives of the men of her house’ – the house in Pasolobino, Spain.

The story flashes back to 1953, when 26-year-old Jacobo and his 24-year-old brother Kilian leave Pasolobino, where their mother Mariana, and sister Catalina live, to work on the cocoa plantation in Sampaka, Bioko, where their father has been working for the past two years. But two years later, in 1955, their father is dead.

Kilian married Pilar, and had a daughter Daniela. Jacobo married Carmen and had a daughter Clarence. Jacobo and Kilian became African writers living in Spain. Something happened on the island in 1965, ten years after the death of their father, and all that Clarence knew was a reference in a letter about a rift between the brothers. But to get answers about their lives, Clarence turns to Julia who once lived on the cocoa plantation. On Julia’s advice, Clarence travels to Bioko for three weeks, to the island where it all started.

Bioko (traditionally called Fernando Pó) is an island 32 kilometres off the west coast of Africa, and the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea.  

On the island Clarence learns that someone continues to put flowers on her grandfather’s grave. When she discovers the truth, she confronts her father Jacobo and uncle Kilian, now in their seventies.

Love, lust, race relations, tradtions and superstitions, a brotherly feud, and generational secrets, are the main themes of the novel. It offers a comparison of ideals: the island paradise and their mainland home.

The brilliant start fades and loosens for much of the book, as does the writing style. The last quarter, the confrontation, gains some momentum, but nothing beats the beauty of the initital pages.




MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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