The paper argues that in reimaginingĪnd re-constructing Mustafa‟s story, Lalami appropriates and adapts Aphra Behn‟s To narrate the adventures he undertakes in La Florida for eight years. Postcolonial historical novel, The Moor’s Account recovers Mustafa‟s voice and empowers him al-Zamori, a Moroccan slave known in Spanish annals as Estevanico/Estebanico, who was one of four survivors of the Narváez expedition and whose testimony, unlike those of his Castilian companions, was left out of the official record. Lalami‟s The Moor’s Account (2014) is a historical novel narrated by Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdulssalam. 1968)‟s re-writing of Álvar Núňez Cabeza de Vaca‟s La Relacíon, a travelogue that chronicles Spanish conquistador Panfilo de Narváez (1470–1528)‟s expedition to claim La Florida to the Spanish crown in the sixteenth century. This paper investigates Arab American novelist Laila Lalami (b. The Bakhtinian reading of this story can bring these hidden voices to the surface.

Nevertheless, the scope of the novel does not let her be meticulous enough and sporadically, other voices can be heard from different lines of the story. Therefore other characters including the hero can speak only after her permission. All miscellaneous details of the story are under the control of this monolithic voice. Adding to all that, having employed first point of view as the narrator, Behn provides an opportunity for herself to enforce her political attitude to the story. A Bakhtinian reading, however, can disclose other massages. They both respect it and believe in its need for the society. On the surface, Aphra Behn and her hero seem to be of the same opinion toward monarchy and accordingly its policies. She attempts to portray her protagonist as the one who believes in social hierarchy what defines a gentleman from the narrator’s viewpoint. As a Tory proponent of her time, she defends the colonization and tries her best not to stand against. Aphra Behn, the author, intends to impose her monolithic view on the readers. Additionally, his relationship with the slave society lets their different beliefs and ideas be revealed to the reader despite the author’s will. The subtitle of the story, The Royal Slave, can be implied as referring to this paradox. This degradation, beside other elements of Bakhtinian carnivalesque, makes his language a unique one, belonging neither to aristocrats anymore nor to the slaves, but simultaneously representing both. Oroonoko, who used to be the prince of Coramantien, is doomed to live as a slave in Surinam a British colony. Having had its protagonist in a carnivalistic world, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko provides a polyphonic atmosphere in which different attitudes toward colonization can be heard.

Oroonoko online