São Tomé and Príncipe / All works
Novel
Vila Flogá
Not translated into English
Sum Marky · 1963
Synopsis
Sum Olímpio, a black cook, serves two white bachelors, Sum Ferón and Sum Raul, lovers of wine, women and songs. He lives in a hut he built with his own hands and calls Vila Flogá, but a slum-clearance scheme is to raze it: to buy another plot he needs three hundred escudos, which he means to borrow from his employers, and to steal from them as well.
Context
Printed in 1963 at Fundão, in Portugal, on the presses of the Jornal do Fundão, with no publisher's name, the novel runs to nearly three hundred pages. The Modern Novel judges it mostly humorous, mocking towards Olímpio's worries and his employers' escapades, but notes that it also shows the condition of the Creoles in the face of the whites, the use of forced labour on the plantations and the Batepá massacre.
Who it is for
For discovering a São Toméan novel from before independence, a comedy that lets colonial society show through.
Prizes and reception
For the same critic, the book is funny but socially serious; all the author's novels are out of print today.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.