Oceà África (African Ocean) is a collection of endearing, friendly, understandable and well-written stories that help to describe a complex Africa that appears simplistically in newspapers and on television. Aldekoa’s Africa is full of smiles and tears, misfortunes and fortunes, adventures and misadventures, everything a bit, like a complex and complicated universe (an ocean). Much more complicated than we think and we are told. And Aldekoa makes it a little less complicated. Not more understandable, but a little closer to our mindsets. It is as if he translated into a flatter language from the highest level at which the African universe (ocean) is written. I read this first book by Aldekoa after his second (Los Hijos del Nilo) and I must admit that both are modeled. Yes, they are still stories that catch, entertain and teach. But after all, they are repeated stories. Possibly the journalist will have to make an effort in a possible third book to surprise us and keep us interested in his African universe (ocean).
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