I have readPepetela, Yaka
José Eduardo Agualusa, O vendedor dos passados, O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio Ondjaki, Os da minha rua |
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I have written |
o paraíso e outros infernos |
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Certainly I know a couple of things about Angolan literature; it makes part of my Lusitanist profession. I've written a couple of texts on Ondjaki and Agualusa. And now, staying in Lisbon for the pandemic, I try to put this knowledge up-to-date, hopefully having some new texts in view. This is why I bought this book, O Paraíso e Outros Infernos, although I immediately felt a bit sorry; I thought it would be a novel. It is a sort of diary, quite close to the genre I cultivate myself in my online journal. A bit more developed, time consuming; of course, if he could hope to publish it in volume later on, it was a good investment. While I write mainly to keep the track of my own intellectual and psychological progress.
Agualusa's notes cover largely the year 2015, in which some innocent people were imprisoned, allegedly for preparing a coup d'état in Angola. The writer speaks for them, gives voice for their hunger strike. But he also speaks of Kalaf Epalanga, and of that moment in which Angolan new rich bough properties in the ex-metropolis. Getting rich and having democracy are two distinct things that does not necessarily come together. Some of those things he says come in the direction of my own transcolonial thinking and what I call the new horizontal diagram of relationships, instead of the old, hierarchical diagram internalised by the colonial and post-colonial subalterns. He speaks of "horizontal Lusophony", which is exactly what I want to study. Lisbon, 9.05.2020. |
