José Eduardo Agualusa

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José Eduardo Agualusa (2010)

José Eduardo Agualusa (born December 13, 1960 in Huambo ) is an Angolan writer.

life and work

José Eduardo Agualusa initially studied agriculture and forestry in Lisbon , but soon worked as a journalist and writer. His first novel was published in Portugal in 1989 . In addition to novels, short stories and poetry, he has also written children's and youth literature as well as several plays, three of them together with the Mozambican writer Mia Couto . He also continues to work as a journalist and writes columns for the Brazilian daily newspaper O Globo . For the Portuguese broadcaster RDP África , he has hosted a program on African music and literature for years.

His now almost 50 books have been translated into more than 25 languages. So far, five novels have been translated into German.

The Portuguese , in which he writes, is "has taken an African language, the terms, phrases, rhythms and emotions of the Angolan people" no longer the language of the former colonial masters, but for Agualusa. In this regard, he is close to Luandino Vieira and Pepetela , who, like him, are Angolans of Portuguese descent.

Agualusa's first novel, A Conjura (“The Conspiracy”), was published in 1989. The central theme of this historical novel, which is set in São Paulo de Luanda from 1880 to 1911, is the intermingling of cultures in modern Angolan society. The growing self-confidence of the Creole minority within a society shaped by opposites is also the subject of his second novel A Feira dos Assombrados ("The Market of the Damned", 1992).

In cooperation with Fernando Semedo and the photographer Elza Rocha, Agualusa brought out the volume Lisboa Africana ("African Lisbon") in 1993 , which documents the diverse cultural impulses that Portuguese society has experienced from its African population group. In his contemporary novel Estação das chuvas ("Rainy Season ") from 1996, the first-person narrator, equipped with autobiographical features, drafts a sober social chronicle of facts and fictions around the fictional life story of the Angolan poet and historian Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, which shows the reader the devastating consequences of 30 years of war and civil war in an oppressive way.

The main character of his novel project Nação Crioula (German: "A Stone Under Water") from 1997 borrowed Agualusa from a letter novel by the great Portuguese writer Eça de Queiroz (1845–1900). In a witty literary game, he extends the template to include the perspective of the Angola colony on Europe and also on Brazil, which was colonized mainly from Angola.

In 2000 he received a scholarship from the Fundação Oriente for a stay in Goa , which culminated in the novel Um estranho em Goa . In 2001 he was a DAAD scholarship holder in Berlin for one year , where he wrote O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio . The novel Barroco Tropical was created during a fellowship stay in Amsterdam.

In 2006 he initiated the founding of the Brazilian publisher "Língua Geral", which only publishes works that were originally written in Portuguese.

In 2007 he was the first African writer to receive the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for the novel O vendedor de Passados (English translation by Daniel Hahn: The Book of Chameleons , German translation by Michael Kegler : Das Lachen des Geckos ). His novel Barroco Tropical , presented in the original in 2009 and a German translation in 2011, was nominated for the International House of World Cultures Prize in 2012. In 2017 he and his translator Daniel Hahn received the International DUBLIN Literary Award for Teoria geral do esquecimento (2012; English translation A general theory of oblivion , German edition: A general theory of forgetting .) Once again he was the first African to received this award.

Agualusa lives alternately in Lisbon and on the Ilha de Moçambique .

Others

José Eduardo Agualusa took part in the international literature festival berlin several times . He lived in Berlin as a participant in the DAAD's 2001/2002 artist program, where he wrote the novel O Ano em que Zumbi Tomou o Rio . In 2018 he was a guest at the literature festival Poetic Sources in Bad Oeynhausen, and in 2020 he was headliner of the African Book Festival Berlin.

Awards

  • Grande Prémio de Literatura da RTP for Nação crioula (German title "A stone under water")
  • Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for O Vendedor de Passados ( Eng . Title "The Gecko's Laughing")
  • 2017: International DUBLIN Literary Award for A General Theory of Oblivion (in the original: Teoria geral do Esquecimento (2012); German title "A General Theory of Forgetting")

Works

  • A conjura. Novel. 1989.
  • Coração dos bosques. Poetry. 1991.
  • A Feira dos Assombrados. Novella. 1992.
  • Lisboa Africana. Report. 1993.
  • Estação das chuvas. Novel. 1996.
  • Nação Crioula. Novel. 1997.
  • Fronteiras Perdidas, contos para viajar. Stories. 1999.
  • To estranho em Goa. Novel. 2000.
  • Estranhões e Bizarrocos. Children's book. 2000.
  • A Substância do Amor e Outras Crónicas. Glosses. 2000.
  • O Homem que Parecia um Domingo. Stories. 2002.
  • Catálogo de Sombras. Stories. 2003.
  • O Ano em que Zumbi Tomou o Rio. Novel. 2003.
  • O Vendedor de Passados. Novel. 2004.
    • Translation: The Gecko's Laughter. Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Michael Kegler . A1 Verlag , Munich 2008.
  • Manual Prático de Levitação. Stories. 2005.
  • As Mulheres de Meu Pai. Novel. 2007.
    • Translation: My father's wives. Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Michael Kegler. A1 Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-940666-10-9 .
  • Barroco tropical. Novel. 2009.
    • Translation: Barroco tropical. Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Michael Kegler. A1 Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-940666-19-2 .
  • To Pai em Nascimento. Crónicas / glosses. 2010.
  • Milagrário Pessoal. Novel. 2010.
  • A sentimental educação dos pássaros. Stories. 2011.
  • Teoria geral do esquecimento. Novel. 2012.
    • Translation: A general theory of forgetting. Translated from the Portuguese by Michael Kegler. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-71340-8 .
  • A vida no céu. Youth book / novel. 2013.
    • Excerpts from it in German translation in the anthology Imagine Africa 2060 edited by Christa Morgenrath / Eva Wernecke, Peter-Hammer-Verlag, 2019
  • A rainha Ginga. Novel. 2014.
  • O livro dos camaleões. Stories. 2015.
  • A sociedade dos sonhadores involuntários. Novel. 2017.
    • Translation: The Society of Involuntary Dreamers. Translated from the Portuguese by Michael Kegler. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73374-1 .
  • O terrorista elegant e outras histórias. (Co-author Mia Couto), Quetzal Editores, ISBN 978-989-722-621-2 (three short stories, 2019).

Web links

Commons : José Eduardo Agualusa  - Collection of Images
Reviews
Interviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simon Gikandi: Encyclopedia of African Literature . Taylor & Francis, 2003, ISBN 1-134-58223-4 , pp. 18 (English, full text in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa wins € 100,000 International Dublin literary award , theguardian.com, June 21, 2017, accessed June 21, 2017.
  3. ↑ African color theory. In: FAZ . October 26, 2010, p. 26.

Essays

  • Kian-Harald Karimi: Semper em viagem: nações deslizantes como formas do pensamento no romance 'Nação Crioula' de José Eduardo Agualusa. In: Identidades em Movimento. Construções identitárias na África de língua portuguesa e reflexos no Brasil e em Portugal. (Eds. Doris Wieser, Enrique Rodrigues-Moura). TFM (Biblioteca luso-brasileira), Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-939455-12-7 , pp. 141–172.
  • Kian-Harald Karimi: Always on the move - Nations as flexible forms of thinking in José E. Agualusa's Nação Crioula. In: Lusorama. No. 101-102, 2015, pp. 86-118.
personal data
SURNAME Agualusa, José Eduardo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Angolan writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Huambo , Angola