Angola, a Nation in Pieces in José Eduardo Agualusa’s <em>Estação das chuvas</em>

Abstract

In this article, I examine José Eduardo Agualusa’s Estação das chuvas (1996), as a novel that lays bare the contradictions of the MPLA’s revolutionary process after Angola’s independence. I begin with a discussion of the proximity between trauma and (the impossibility) of fiction. I then consider the challenges Angolan writers face in presenting an alternative discourse to the "one-party, one-people, one-nation" narrative propagated by the MPLA). Finally, I discuss how Estação das chuvas, which complicates both truth/verisimilitud and history/fiction, presents an alternative vision of Angola’s national narrative.