The novel, The Sixth Night’s Book Reviews at a glance!
The Sixth Night is a scaled down, James A. Michener-style historical
fiction set mainly in colonial Goa.
……..
The book is well researched, and Goa's history is sufficiently interesting,
making The Sixth Night a worthwhile read for history lovers and travel junkies.
Zoe Ackah, in the
Review of “The Sixth Night” on The Epoch Times, Toronto July 27, 2005.
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“The Badge”, Toronto, Canada
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The novel held my
attention for many reasons. Chief of these were that there was an excellent
continuous thread within a very human story. Secondly, it was informatively set
against the political and social background in Goa from Portuguese times until
1961, and beyond to the UK and Canada. Thirdly, I felt that the warmth of the
presentation of the material by the author was genuinely captivating….
The personal and
the political are succinctly intertwined throughout. In particular, the
ramifications of caste practice in Goa are exemplified with vivid and realistic
illustrations of painful occurrences there.
… filled with so
much nostalgia that is encapsulated in the Sixth Night.
Dr. Cornel Da Costa Ph. D. London, U.K.
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Silviano Barbosa, the author, weaves a very
fascinating narrative around this old Goan belief, exposing the social mores
based on caste iniquities and servile mental attitudes implanted to the very
core of the Goan psyche by the feudal and colonial hierarchies during that
period of Goa’s history.
I enjoyed reading The Sixth Night.
Lino Leitão – author of The
Gift of the Holy Cross.
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This novel is an interesting blend of fiction
and non-fiction. If the reader wanted to sample a slice of life as lived in
Portuguese Goa in the last 15 years of colonial rule, this novel has plenty to
engage his interest. If the reader wanted to know what it’s like for an
immigrant to fulfill his Canadian dream, this story has enough to satisfy his
curiosity. Barbosa has handled, with enthusiasm, both these slices of the
heroine’s life. If the story feels maudlin towards the end, it’s in the nature
of such a genre to appear so. Tears and smiles are the stock-in-trade of the
soap opera. Goans …will understand my point of view and enjoy this novel. It’s
a truism in fiction writing today that writers show the story, not tell it.
This requires that the narrative be done in scenes with dramatized action, as
if the reader is watching a movie. Barbosa is most effective where he has
followed this dictum.
Ben Antao, Author of books, “Blood and Nemesis”, “Images of Goa” and
“Goa, A Rediscovery”.
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The Sixth
Night makes its appearance as a novel.
It sketches its characters, works out a plot to tell a story, and paints its
backdrop. The hero(ine) of the piece is actually the backdrop, the setting in
Goa against which the protagonist Linda Cardoso plays out her life. The author,
Silviano C. Barbosa delves into memory and oral tradition, history and possibly
personal experience, to weave a detailed tapestry of Goan life which he
obviously knows very closely and loves very dearly. It is with pangs of recognition,
and perhaps nostalgia that one travels through the novel: we discover pictures
and textures, domestic and communitarian. From the rituals surrounding birth
and death, to the preparation of food and the celebration of the village fest,
from the exigencies of finding employment and tales of migration, from love of
the tiatro and the khell to the passion for football, from hierarchies and
power structures in the village to the roles of women, from the timid entry of
a village girl into a Westernised town and eventually migration into Europe and
the Americas, from history to folklore, the novel draws on the storehouse of
the social history of Goa through the eyes, mostly, of the heroine, Linda. It
is a tour that many a Goan reader of the older generation will admit to being
close to his/her own; one that for the younger Goan might put flesh on the
bones of the history he/she reads about; one that the general reader will find
a treasure of sociological detail. Could it be the destiny of the land itself,
the ‘linda’ Goa that the author loves, that the goddess determines? Certainly,
it is this love and familiarity that the reality it documents that most
strongly characterize The Sixth Night.
Prof. Isabel Santa Rita Vas, Educationist, Social Activist, writer, Goa.
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The novel is an interesting tool for getting to
understand how culture can become a self-policing phenomenon which can provide
security to its adherents, but also become brutal in its uncompromising
application.
The plot has been well designed, and the progression
of events well constructed.
Ives Pereira, Retired Teacher, Toronto.
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A novel idea 12 years in the making…
Woodbridge resident puts TTC transfers to good use….
By putting his thoughts to paper, Silviano Barbosa has
been ‘Goan’ home a lot more often than usual…
John Hanan, in Tandem, Corriere Canadese, Toronto.