Short stories
Sanzala sem batuque
Not translated into English
Geraldo Bessa-Victor · 1967
Synopsis
Eight stories of colonial Luanda, some set in the thirties, in the Maculusso district. “É proibido brincar” sets two couples side by side, Hortense and Bernardo, a Black civil servant, Genoveva and Julião, a mixed-race employee who prides himself on his wife; an arrest there reveals the colonial hierarchy that places the mixed-race person above the Black person. “A filha de Ngana Chica” also revolves around mixed heritage; “O pecúlio” is an unexpected drama, and other pieces are closer to anecdote.
Context
The collection appeared in Braga in 1967, from Pax, in the series Metrópole e Ultramar, in a hundred and twenty-three pages; a five-page glossary explains the Kimbundu words and expressions. Based in Lisbon, the author keeps in view the social tensions he had observed in Angola. Part of the critical response has reproached his work for its exoticism and its silence on the anger of oppressed Africans; others praise the vision and musicality of the verse.
Who it is for
Stories in Portuguese, with lively and often ironic dialogue; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
The first book of fiction by an author who was first a poet; a review there praises the attention paid to racial mixing and racial tensions.
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