Pampa Kampana

Pampa Kampana is the main character of the novel. On the opening page of Chapter 1, the narrator describes her as “the blind poet, miracle worker, and prophetess,” responsible for writing the “immense narrative poem about Bisnaga” which has inspired their own iteration of the account (3). When Pampa was nine years old, she watched her mother throw herself on to the dead king’s funeral pyre. Shortly thereafter, the goddess, also called Pampa Kampana, inhabited Pampa’s mind, body, and mouth. She told Pampa that in the same place where her mother had burned, a new kingdom would soon be born. Pampa would be responsible for birthing this empire. Over the course of her 247-year life, Pampa would also “fight to make sure that no more women” were burned like her mother and the king’s widows, “and that men start[ed] considering women in new ways” (8). Although...