José Eduardo Agualusa

José Eduardo Agualusa
Born December 13, 1960
Huambo
Occupation writer, journalist

José Eduardo Agualusa (Alves da Cunha) (born December 13, 1960, in Huambo, Angola—then called Nova Lisboa, Overseas Province of Angola) is an Angolan journalist and writer. He studied agronomy and silviculture in Lisbon, Portugal. He currently spends most of his time in Portugal, Angola and Brazil, working as a writer and journalist. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages. He writes monthly for the Portuguese magazine LER and weekly for the Brazilian newspaper O Globo and the Angolan portal Rede Angola. He hosts the radio program A Hora das Cigarras, about African music and poetry, on the channel RDP África. In 2006, he launched, with Conceição Lopes and Fatima Otero, the Brazilian publisher Língua Geral, dedicated exclusively to Portuguese-language authors.

Bibliography

He has also published, in collaboration with fellow journalist Fernando Semedo and photographer Elza Rocha, a work of investigative reporting on the African community of Lisbon, Lisboa Africana (1993). His play Aquela Mulher was performed by Brazilian actress Marília Gabriela (directed by Antônio Fagundes) in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2008 and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2009. He co-wrote the play Chovem amores na Rua do Matador with Mozambican writer Mia Couto.

Translated Works

These novels were all translated into English by Daniel Hahn:

Creole (Nação Crioula—novel, 2002): Tells the story of a secret love between the fictional Portuguese adventurer Carlos Fradique Mendes (a creation of the 19th century Portuguese novelist Eça de Queiroz) and Ana Olímpia de Caminha, a former slave who became one of the wealthiest persons in Angola.

The Book of Chameleons (O Vendedor de Passados—novel, 2004): An excerpt of The Book of Chameleons appeared in Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing in 2009.

My Father's Wives (As Mulheres de Meu Pai—novel, 2008)

Rainy Season (Estação das Chuvas—novel, 2009): A biographical novel about Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, the Angolan poet and historian who disappeared mysteriously in Luanda in 1992.

A General Theory of Oblivion (Teoria Geral do Esquecimento—novel, 2015): Tells the history of Angola from the perspective of a woman named Ludo who barricades herself in her Luandan apartment for three decades—beginning the day before the country's independence.

Awards

José Eduardo Agualusa

Agualusa benefited from three literary grants: the first awarded by the Portuguese Centro Nacional de Cultura in 1997 to write Nação Crioula (Creole); the second given in the year 2000 by the Portuguese Fundação Oriente allowing him to visit Goa, India, for three months which resulted in Um estranho em Goa; the third, in 2001, was prestiged by the German Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Thanks to that grant, he lived one year in Berlin, where he wrote O Ano em que Zumbi Tomou o Rio. In 2009, he was invited by the Dutch Residency for Writers in Amsterdam, where he wrote Barroco Tropical.

Nação Crioula (1997) was awarded the RTP Great Literary Prize. The Book of Chameleons (2006) won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. He is the first African writer to win the award since its inception in 1990.

Criticism and Interpretation

Agualusa's work was described by Ana Mafalda Leite as sometimes providing "a link between history and fiction, between the account of past events and the description of what might have been possible." The critic continues, "The author tries...to capture the moment in which history becomes literature, to illustrate how literary imagination takes precedence over the historical by means of the fantastic and an oneiric vision of life." Her assessment of the author's skills is as follows: "Agualusa gives evidence not just of solid historical research but also of the literary talent which brings these characters to life."[1]

Further reading

Brookshaw, David. 2002. Voices from Lusophone borderlands: the Angolan identities of António Agostinho Neto, Jorge Arrimar and José Eduardo Agualusa. Maynooth: National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Guterres, Maria. "History and Fiction in José Eduardo Agualusa's Novels." Fiction in the Portuguese-Speaking World. Ed. Charles M. Kelley. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000. pp. 117–38. Print.

Notes

  1. ↑ Leite, Ana Mafalda. "Angola." The Postcolonial Literature of Lusophone Africa. Ed. Patrick Chabal. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996. p. 114. Print.


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