Short stories
Imitação de Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir
Not translated into English
João Melo · 1999
Synopsis
Ten short stories in which ordinary people collide with a reality that suddenly ceases to make sense. The title is ironic: the French philosopher and novelist it names are nowhere to be found in Angolan society, and their names evoke a literary and philosophical memory rather than a model. The irony, which asks the reader to take part, targets social conduct, Angolan machismo included, the condition of women and that of other excluded people, reduced to marginal practices in order to survive.
Context
The collection appears in Lisbon from Caminho in 1999, the date given by two studies; a third and a university journal date it to 1998. It marks its author's move from poet to short fiction, and opens a series of story collections published by the same publisher, including Filhos da pátria in 2001. A university scholar ranks it from 1999 among the innovative voices of Angolan letters, and critics read in it a postmodern and anticolonial work.
Who it is for
Ten stories in Portuguese, in an ironic tone; no French or English translation of the collection.
Prizes and reception
The first of his books to be translated into Arabic, presented in 2024 at the Tunis book fair; its author received the national literature prize in 2009, according to one source.
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