Short stories
Quinaxixe
Not translated into English
Arnaldo Santos · 1965
Synopsis
Stories from Luanda, gathered under the name of the Quinaxixe, the lagoon that became a symbol of the city. The title story draws on childhood memories to paint this musseque on the margins, at the moment when these districts are growing and many white Portuguese are arriving: tense relations between Blacks, mixed-race people and whites, a divide between tradition and modernity, neighbourhood stories and games.
Context
The collection appeared in Lisbon in 1965 from the Casa dos Estudantes do Império, five years after a first book of verse. The lagoon from which it takes its name was filled in at the beginning of the seventies for the construction of a building. Its stories were reprinted, with other prose pieces, in a volume published in São Paulo in 1981, and a university study of 2023 reads in this narrative a musseque that is at once realistic and recomposed by fiction.
Who it is for
Stories in Portuguese, marked by African languages; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
The first prose book by its author, and one of his best-known titles; its title story is still studied.
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