José Eduardo Agualusa Alves da Cunha was born on December 13, 1960. He is an Angolan writer and columnist with Portuguese and Brazilian heritage. He studied agronomy and silviculture in Lisbon, Portugal. He currently lives on the Island of Mozambique, where he works as a writer and journalist. He has also been helping to create a public library on the island.
Writing career
Agualusa writes mostly in Portuguese, his native language. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages, including English by Daniel Hahn, a common partner in his work. Much of his writing explores the history of Angola.
Rainy Season (Estação das Chuvas, 1996) is a story about Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, an Angolan poet and historian who disappeared without explanation in Luanda in 1992.
Creole (Nação Crioula, 1997) follows a secret relationship between Carlos Fradique Mendes, a fictional Portuguese adventurer created by the 19th-century writer Eça de Queiroz, and Ana Olímpia de Caminha, a former slave who became one of Angola’s wealthiest people.
The Book of Chameleons (O Vendedor de Passados, 2004) was included in Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing in 2009. The Portuguese title means "The Seller of Pasts," but Agualusa and Hahn agreed on the English title The Book of Chameleons. Agualusa liked the title so much that he reused it in Portuguese for a later collection of short stories that has not been translated yet: O Livro dos Camaleões.
A General Theory of Oblivion (Teoria Geral do Esquecimento, 2012) describes Angola’s history from the perspective of a woman named Ludo, who locks herself in her Luandan apartment for thirty years, starting the day before the country’s independence.
Agualusa has gained recognition in English-speaking literary circles, especially for A General Theory of Oblivion. This novel, written in 2012 and translated in 2015, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and won the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award.
Agualusa writes monthly for the Portuguese magazine LER and weekly for the Brazilian newspaper O Globo and the Angolan website Rede Angola. He hosts a radio show called A Hora das Cigarras, which discusses African music and poetry, on RDP África. In 2006, he co-founded the Brazilian publisher Língua Geral with Conceição Lopes and Fatima Otero. The publisher focuses only on works by Portuguese-language authors.
Criticism and interpretation
Ana Mafalda Leite described Agualusa's work as sometimes connecting history and fiction, linking real events with possibilities that could have happened. She explained that the author attempts to show the moment when history turns into literature, using imaginative and dreamlike views of life. Leite noted that Agualusa demonstrates strong historical knowledge and the ability to create believable characters through his writing.
Awards and honors
In June 2017, Agualusa and his translator, Daniel Hahn, received the International Dublin Literary Award for Agualusa’s novel A General Theory of Oblivion. His work won among ten books from around the world, including one by Irish author Anne Enright. The prize was €100,000, with Agualusa receiving €75,000 and Hahn receiving €25,000.
Agualusa’s book Nação Crioula (1997) won the RTP Great Literary Prize. His novel The Book of Chameleons (2006) received the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. He was the first African writer to win this award since it began in 1990.
Agualusa received three literary grants. The first, from the Portuguese Centro Nacional de Cultura in 1997, helped him write Nação Crioula (Creole). The second, from the Portuguese Fundação Oriente in 2000, allowed him to visit Goa, India, for three months, leading to the book Um estranho em Goa. The third, from the German Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst in 2001, let him live in Berlin for a year, 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.