António Pires (writer)

Antonio Pires

António Pires (born November 10, 1916 in Lisbon ) is a Portuguese - Angolan writer and journalist. Pires was due to his extensive knowledge of Angola and his diverse work as a correspondent as one of the most famous journalists of the 1960s in Angola.

Life

Youth and education

António Pires was born on November 10, 1916 in Lisbon and moved with his family to what was then the Portuguese colony of Angola in 1924 at the age of eight . Already in his school days he began to work as a journalist and founded the school newspaper O Estudante with others .

Journalistic activity

After completing school, at the age of 23 he began to work as a journalist for the daily Diário de Luanda , for which he worked until 1945. In 1955 Pires took part in the first Congress of Portuguese Economics in Luanda, where his work entitled Aprovaitamento das máterias-pirmas de Angola dentro do critério de unidade económica nacional (Use of Angola's raw material in the interests of national economic unity).

After a break of several years, he worked again as a journalist from 1954, mainly for the newspaper A Província de Angola . There he was initially editor-in-chief and later, from 1958 to 1964, deputy chairman of the board of directors.

In 1964, Pires founded the weekly business newspaper Actualidade Económica , which he directed, but for which he also worked as a journalist. Furthermore, Pires worked as a local correspondent for numerous international newspapers, including The New York Times , but also agencies such as Agence France Presse , United Press International and Asian News International . In addition to his correspondent activities in Angola, he also visited numerous countries: on official invitation, he visited the Federal Republic of Germany (1968 and 1973), Austria (1968 and 1975), the United States (1974) with a focus on the economic, financial and industrial sectors of these Countries and made professional trips to England, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and France, Italy and Switzerland as well as several francophone and Anglophone countries in Africa, such as the then People's Republic of Congo (Brazaville), the Democratic Republic of Zaire (Kinshasa), Gabon, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania and Nigeria, as well as the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Mozambique. He was part of the journalistic delegation accompanying the visit of then President Portugal, Craveiro Lopes , to Brazil in 1957 after he returned to that country in 1972 and 1973. In particular in the 1960s until Angola's independence, António Pires was considered one of the most famous journalists in Angola.

Writing activity

In addition to his journalistic activities, Pires also published several works of fiction. In 1949 he published the novel Sangue Cuanhama (Cuanhama blood), for which he won the Pires first prize in the literary competition of the Portuguese overseas agency. The following year he won second prize in the same competition with the novel Luiana . In 1959 he published Tonga - Epopeia do Café , which was awarded the first prize of the Motta Veiga Foundation at the provincial level.

In addition to these early works, his two works, A última viagem and Deasolojados: A tragédia nacional dos "retornados", portugueses expulsos de Angola from 1976, in which he describes the suffering of the Portuguese settlers who returned to Portugal after Angola's independence, are considered outstanding had fled and faced massive integration problems in Portugal (so-called “ retornados ”, returnees in German). He published both in 1975.

Works

• 1949: Sangue Cuanhama (novel)
• 1950: Luiana (novel)
• 1955: Matérias-Primas Angonalas numa política de integração económica nacional (Thesis)
• 1956: Angola eo mercado comum Europeu (collection of articles)
• 1959: Tonga, Epopeia do Café (novel)
• 1964: Angola, essa desconhecida (collection of articles)
• 1965: Panorama e perspectivas da exploração dos minérios de ferro de Angola (collection of articles)
• 1972: Com os olhos no futuro (collection of articles)
• 1975: Se queremos fazer de Angola um País novo (article)
• 1975: A última viagem (novel)
• 1975: Desalojados (novel)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Adriano da Guerra Andrade: Dicionário de pseudónimos e iniciais de escritores portugueses . 1st edition. Biblioteca Nacional, Lisboa 1999, ISBN 972-565-262-2 , pp. 420 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Orquídea Ribeiro: Pires, António . In: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Eds.): Dictionary of African Biography . tape 5 . Oxford Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5 , pp. 110 f .