José Eduardo Agualusa

Agualusa writes predominantly in his native language, Portuguese.[3] His books have been translated into twenty-five languages, most notably into English by translator Daniel Hahn, a frequent collaborator of his. Much of his writing focuses on the history of Angola.[4]

Rainy Season (Estação das Chuvas, 1996) is a biographical novel about Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, the Angolan poet and historian who disappeared mysteriously in Luanda in 1992.

Creole (Nação Crioula, 1997) 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, 2004) was excerpted in Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing in 2009. The original Portuguese title means "The Seller of Pasts" but Agualusa and Hahn mutually agreed to title it The Book of Chameleons in English—a title that Agualusa liked so much that he repurposed it, in Portuguese, for a subsequent collection of short stories that has not yet been translated: O Livro dos Camaleões.

A General Theory of Oblivion (Teoria Geral do Esquecimento, 2012) 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.

He has seen some success in English-speaking literary circles, most notably for A General Theory of Oblivion. That novel, written in 2012 and translated in 2015, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize,[5] and was the recipient of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award.[6]

Agualusa 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.

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."[7]

In June 2017, Agualusa, alongside Daniel Hahn, his translator, was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award for his novel A General Theory of Oblivion. Agualusa's work beat a shortlist of ten titles from around the world, including one written by Irish author Anne Enright, to claim the €100,000 prize. Agualusa was awarded €75,000 personally, as the translator, Daniel Hahn, was entitled to a €25,000 share of the prize money.[11]

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.[12]

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.

• 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.

• Homepage of José Eduardo Agualusa
• Biography Archived 2018-02-06 at the Wayback Machine from the international literature festival berlin
• "Angolan author wins fiction prize", BBC News, 1 May 2007
• "An Interview with José Eduardo Agualusa"
• "A General Theory Of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa; trans. Daniel Hahn, book review", The Independent, 2 July 2015
• "A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa—Review" Archived 2016-05-04 at the Wayback Machine, The Big Issue, 15 July 2015