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

  • Raquel Ribeiro Edinburgh University
Keywords: Angolan literature, MPLA, Civil war, Truth and fiction, Nation

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.

Author Biography

Raquel Ribeiro, Edinburgh University
Raquel Ribeiro is lecturer in Portuguese Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in the cultural significance of Cuban-Angolan relations.
Published
2016-06-28