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José
Eduardo Agualusa Angola
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José Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo in 1960 and is considered one of Angola’s most
important writers. He studied in Lisbon and currently lives in Portugal, Angola
and Brazil. Both as a novelist and a reporter Agualusa
has become an important voice of his country.
In 2007, Agualusa was awarded the Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize.
His first book, A Conjura (“The Conspiracy”), published in
1989, is a historical novel set in Angola in the
period between 1880 and 1911. As in his later novel, A nação crioula (“Creole
Nation”), Agualusa paints a fascinating portrait of a society marked by
opposites, in which only those who adapt have a chance of succeeding. The
necessary process of adaptation corresponds to that of creolization. By this
Agualusa not only means mixing black and white, but above all, mixing different
cultures, a theme on which this author, himself a Creole, focuses again and
again in his subsequent works.
The novel O vendedor de passados (“The Book of
Chameleons”), published in 2004, has been drawing a lot of attention since its
publication and has been reprinted several times. The albino Félix Ventura
lives in Luanda in a big house full of books and earns his living by offering
an altogether unusual service: he invents pasts. After decades of war, Angola
is undergoing rapid change. It is home to many people with absolutely
unimaginable careers, but their pasts are not always quite presentable if they
want to have a promising future. So Félix Ventura invents acceptable pasts for
several people - they all receive a family register with family photographs and
the necessary documents. The omniscient narrator tells the story from a rather
intriguing perspective: that of a lizard. In the fiction of reconstructed pasts
much turns out to be real. With ironic nudges and winks, Agualusa holds up a
mirror to his country and stages a complex confusion in which
truth and lies, reality and fiction lead to a surprising end.
Fierce originality, vindicating the power of creativity to transform the most sinister acts. Not since Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis have we had such a convincing non-human narrator, brought vividly home to us by Daniel Hahn.
Amanda Hopkinson, the Independent
…Agualusa weaves a gorgeous and intricate story about a man who trades in memories, selling people pasts to help reinvent their futures.…There’s a murder mystery here, and not only a meditation on the nature of memory. Agualusa’s deftness and lightness of touch means we buy into the strange setup with scarcely a blink. He’s a young master.
Richard Rayner, L.A. Times
José Eduardo Agualusa is an exceptionally gifted
author. His new novel appears quiet and discreet, charming and sensitive.
Agualusa has mastered the art of the fine and unagitated style.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Moving between fiction and reality, in As mulheres
do meu pai (“My Father’s Wives”) José Eduardo Agualusa tells the story of
the musician Faustino Manso, who, at his death, left eight widows and eighteen
children in different cities and countries across Africa. Laurentina is a film
director who lives in Lisbon. When her mother dies, she leaves a letter telling
how Laurentina was adopted in Angola and that her real father was Faustino
Manso. Laurentina decides to go to Africa to find out more about the father she
never knew, and to make a documentary about the life of the late musician.
Together with a group made up of her boyfriend Mandume, her newfound nephew Bartolomeu, her photographer Jordi and the driver of their ancient vehicle, Pouca Sorte, they set out from Luanda, the Angolan capital, heading for Mozambique, via Namibia and South Africa. The narration through the eyes of the different characters and their different perspectives leads the reader on a journey across modern-day Africa and into its historical roots, through times of political struggle and a still-present sense of mysticism. The idea of the African Male is deconstructed as the narration progresses, in a very human manner, bringing to light the power held by African women.
Laurentina returns to Lisbon at the end of the long
journey, pregnant and certain that Faustino Manso was sterile. As mulheres
de meu pai is a journey that takes the reader to Africa in its music,
cooking, passions and landscapes. Through his depiction of the harsh reality of
an Africa that is still suffering from the wounds of its difficult past,
Agualusa brings out simply the richness of these countries and their
inhabitants, making a refreshing change from the gloomy news of the
international media.
In Africa, where some see light, others see only shadows, Agualusa chooses the light. A radiant humour and humanity speeds this novel trough its picaresque twists and turns.
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
With charm and colour, Agualusa celebrates the creole world of
Portuguese Africa, […]
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
The novel Barroco tropical ("Tropical
Baroque") tells a passionate love story hurtling inevitably towards an
abyss, just like the Angolan society in which it is set.
The novel opens with a magnificent scene, in which the
narrator Bartolomeu Falcato watches his lover Kianda against the backdrop of an
approaching thunderstorm. He is a well-known author and filmmaker,
she is an internationally celebrated singer. Suddenly, a woman falls straight
out of the clouds, landing right next to Kianda. It is the famous television
presenter Núbia de Matos. After her victory as Miss Angola, she had to show her
gratitude and was passed around government circles as a top-class call-girl,
later allowed to work on tv. In one of her shows, she
addressed child abuse and drug use among the country's powerful men. That made
her a risk factor, and she was thrown out of a helicopter to her certain death.
While Bartolomeu is abondoned by his wife with his daughters, Kianda tells him she never wants to see him again. Their love is an amour fou, in which both sides thought they were controlling the other, but with Kianda ultimately remaining the unapproachable one whose true self only took form on stage. Later she shocks Bartolomeu by throwing herself out of a window before his very eyes in a staged spectacle, descending from the sky just like Núbia de Matos.
In the end there are no miracles of any kind here.
Kianda, Bartolomeu finds out, had been diagnosed with throat cancer, a sure end
to her singing career. She was not willing to put up with this fate. Meanwhile,
the men behind this murder and other atrocities are more firmly in the saddle
than ever before. Although Bartolomeu manages to save his life he has lost his
wife and his lover. All this takes place between one twilight
and another, in the streets of a city in chaos: Luanda, 2020.
Agualusa's turbulent Angolan novel Barroco Tropical veers between shock and
rapture, between a furious dynamic and the tradition-laden weight of identical
recurrences. A breathtakingly masterful novel.
Frankfurter Rundschau
Agualusa entertains himself and us with his talent for spreading happiness. I would say that in current Portuguese literature there is nothing as spectacular as this. The talent is found in his books, which are written to captivate the reader.
Alexandra Lucas Coelho, ípsilon
José Eduardo Agualusa’s new novel Milagrário pessoal (“Personal Notebook
of Miracles”) is both an unusual love story and a journey across the history of
the Portuguese language. When Iara makes the incredible discovery that the
Portuguese language is being infiltrated by amazingly familiar-sounding new
words, she asks her professor, an 80-year-old Angolan anarchist, for help.
Together they go looking for a mysterious list of words which were once stolen
from the language of the birds.
Milagrário
pessoal
confirms Agualusa as a great writer. This book is a declaration of love to the
Portuguese language.
O Globo
Angola need no longer be on the look-out
for a chronicler of its history - his name is José Eduardo Agualusa.
Cristina Krippahl
José Eduardo Agualusa’s latest novel, Teoria geral do esquecimento
(“A General Theory of Oblivion”), tells the true story of Ludo,
a Portuguese woman who, horrified by the ongoing events of the Angolan War of
Independence in 1975, bricks herself into her apartment in Luanda for almost
thirty years. Interlinking Ludo’s tale with the
moving stories of other characters and writing with a subtle irony that
emphasizes the amazing coincidences of life, Agualusa
creates a convincing and charming whole.
Apart from his novels, Agualusa has also published
poems, short stories and a children’s book, which won several prizes for the
text and the illustrations.
Original editions and
rights sold:
Novels:
A conjura, Lisbon: Caminho 1989, 203 p.
Brazil: Gryphus 2009
Estação das
chuvas,
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1996, 279 p.
Brazil: Gryphus 2001, Língua Geral 2010 ● France: Gallimard 2003 ● Spain: Bronce 2002 (avail.) ● UK: Arcadia 2009
Nação crioula, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1997, 159 p.
Bangladesh: Sandesh ●
Brazil: Gryphus 1999, Língua Geral ●
Germany: dtv 1999 ●
Netherlands: Meulenhoff 2003 ● Croatia:
Meandar
● Spain:
Alianza 1999, Magrana (Catalan) 1999 ●
UK: Arcadia 2002
O ano em que
Zumbi tomou o Rio,
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2002, 282 p.
Brazil: Gryphus 2002 ●
France: Métailié 2007 ● Italy:
Nuova Frontiera 2004 ● Spain:
Cobre 2004
O vendedor de
passados, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2004, 232 p.
Film
rights sold to Conspiração Filmes,
directed by Lula Buarque de Hollanda
Brazil: Gryphus 2004 ● Bulgaria: Prozoretz ● Croatia: Sysprint 2008 ●
Egypt: Sphinx ● Estonia: Varrak ● France: Metáilié 2006 ● Germany:
A1 Verlag 2008 ● Hungary: L’Harmattan ● Israel: Kinneret 2012 ● Italy:
Nuova Frontiera 2008 ● Korea: Joongang
Books 2010 ● Netherlands: Meulenhoff
2007 ● Romania: Corint 2009 ● Russia: Ripol ●
Serbia: Dereta 2008 ● Slovak Republic: Slovart 2008 ● Spain:
Destino 2009 ●
Taiwan: Ye-Ren ● Turkey: Pegasus 2009 ● UK:
Arcadia 2006 ● US: Simon & Schuster 2008
As mulheres
do meu pai, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2007, 382 p.
Brazil: Língua Geral 2007 ●
Croatia: Meandar 2010 ● France:
Métailié 2009 ● Germany:
A1 Verlag 2010 ● Italy: Nuova Frontiera 2010 ● Netherlands: Meulenhoff 2008 ● Poland: Znak ●
Serbia: Dereta ● Spain: Destino ● UK:
Arcadia 2008
Barroco
Tropical, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2009, 342 p.
Brazil:
Companhia das Letras 2009 ● Croatia:
Meandar ● France: Métailié 2011 ● Germany: A1 Verlag 2011 ●
Italy: Nuova Frontiera ● Netherlands: Meulenhoff 2010 ● Serbia:
Dereta
Milagrário
pessoal, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2010, 184 p.
Brazil:
Língua Geral 2010 ● Serbia: Dereta ● UK: Arcadia
Teoria geral
do esquecimento
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2012, 237 p.
Stories
and other texts:
Um estranho
em Goa, Lisbon: Cotovia 2000, 168 p.
Brazil: Gryphus 2001, 2010 ● Italy:
Urogallo 2009
A feira dos
assombrados, 1992, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2001, 147 p.
Lisboa
africana,
Lisbon: ASA 1993, 158 p
Fronteiras
perdidas, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1999, 118 p.
Denmark: Ørby 2001 ● Italy: Morlacchi 2007
A substância
do amor, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2000, 196 p.
Dançar outra
vez, Luanda:
Caxinde 2001, 87 p.
Catálogo de
sombras,
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2003, 151 p.
Manual
prático de levitação, Rio de Janeiro: Gryphus 2005, 153 p.
A Educação
Sentimental dos Pássaros, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2011,
126 p.
O Lugar do Morto, Lisbon: Tinta da China
2011, 157 p.
Italy: Urogallo
Selected stories:
Sweden: Alma viva 2001 ●
Italy: Edizioni dell’Urogallo 2009
Picture
books:
Estranhões
& Bizarrocos
Ill. by Henrique Cayatte
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2000,
61 p.
Several awards for text and
illustrations
Brazil: Língua Geral
A girafa que
comia estrelas
Ill. by Henrique Cayatte
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2005,
25 p.
Brazil: Língua Geral