3.5
A General Theory of Oblivion
ByPublisher Description
Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize
A Portuguese woman shuts herself away after the Angolan War of Independence in this stunning novel from a master storyteller whose writing evokes Gabriel García Márquez and J.M. Coetzee.
On the eve of Angolan independence, an agoraphobic woman named Ludo bricks herself into her Luandan apartment for 30 years, living off vegetables and the pigeons she lures in with diamonds, burning her furniture and books to stay alive, and writing her story on the apartment's walls. As the country goes through various political upheavals—from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism—the world outside seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.
Almost as if we're eavesdropping, the history of Angola unfolds through the stories of those she sees from her window . . . A General Theory of Oblivion is a perfectly crafted, wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.
A Portuguese woman shuts herself away after the Angolan War of Independence in this stunning novel from a master storyteller whose writing evokes Gabriel García Márquez and J.M. Coetzee.
On the eve of Angolan independence, an agoraphobic woman named Ludo bricks herself into her Luandan apartment for 30 years, living off vegetables and the pigeons she lures in with diamonds, burning her furniture and books to stay alive, and writing her story on the apartment's walls. As the country goes through various political upheavals—from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism—the world outside seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.
Almost as if we're eavesdropping, the history of Angola unfolds through the stories of those she sees from her window . . . A General Theory of Oblivion is a perfectly crafted, wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesA General Theory of Oblivion Reviews
3.5
Fatema
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elias
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“Over the years, I’ve worked to try and diversify my bookshelf so that I’m not just reading exclusively from a pool of white authors, and also to challenge myself a little with regards to learning about histories that weren’t taught to me at school or if they were, said histories were perhaps… imperially biased, let’s say. I’m from the UK, and having finished high school in 2008, our history lessons always came with a sheen of: ‘Yeah, the British Empire had its bad parts, but hey look at all the innovations of the Industrial Revolution!’
There are some countries whose histories I know very little of, and it was interesting to dive into this post-colonial novel taking place in Angola during the 1970s communist uprising led by the MPLA (the People’s Movement for Angola) that started as an independence movement away from the Portuguese and lasted all the way until 2002.
Our heroine is a Portuguese woman by the name of Ludovica (Ludo for short), who is dependent upon her older sister due to a possible learning disability slash awkwardness and no social skills that make her supposedly unmarriageable. Her sister and husband leave for business and can’t return to Angola when the political shit hits the fan, so Ludo’s left behind, with her only advice being to try and keep out of trouble. Stay in the apartment, pretend you’re not home if anyone tries to investigate, that sort of thing. Deeply traumatised by the sexual abuse she suffered in her early 20s, Ludo keeps herself in hermitage, giving away her baby to the state and pretty much bricking up her apartment so that nobody knows it exists from the outside and it’s fully sound-insulated to the neighbouring residences.
It was certainly an interesting read and a pretty short novella. I’m sure some reviewers will complain that Ludo should have somehow gotten out of the apartment and appealed to the Portuguese consulate or whatever so she could be repatriated in Europe or South America, but there is a reason for that. You see, Ludo is assumed to have died during the uprising, she has no way of getting in contact with her sister and brother-in-law, so it’s not like she would have had any paperwork with which to travel or even prove her existence.
This is a post-colonial novel, and from that I normally expect descriptions of tropical beauty with the scent of orchids and jacarandas, and characters coming to terms with the new post-independence-from-an-imperial government (in this case, the Portuguese Empire). In Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, there’s an interesting discussion to be had about how Antoinette (who later becomes Mr Rochester’s first wife) goes from having power in Jamaica as a white-passing woman to suddenly not having it, following a slave riot that leaves her homeless. And then when she travels to England, hoping she’ll be able to at least fit in with white society, she can’t, because of the racism and classism embedded into British society that has her ignored and falling into the arms of a hateful twat like Mr Rochester because he’s the only guy who sees past her Creole heritage. Rhys goes far more into the politics of the time and even if Antoinette has no love for her Jamaican home, she at least went in depth about its beauty and its history both before and during the legacy of slavery and colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This novella, on the other hand, is not terribly descriptive in that way—I didn’t get a feel for Angola and I don’t think that could have gone amiss, especially considering that the author himself is a European-born African who’s lived in Luanda for years and currently resides in Mozambique. Both books are about the same length so perhaps some things were lost in translation, who knows.”
Cecil
Created about 2 months agoShare
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Mounir Nessim
Created 3 months agoShare
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About Jose Eduardo Agualusa
José Eduardo Agualusa, a writer and journalist, is one of the leading literary voices in Angola and the Portuguese language today. His books have been translated into 25 languages. Four of his books have been translated into English: Creole (2002), winner of the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature; The Book of Chameleons (2006), which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; My father's wives (2008), and Rainy Season (2009). He has received literary grants from the Centro Nacional da Cultura, the Fundação do Oriente, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst. Agualusa has also written four plays: W generation, O monólogo, Chovem amores na Rua do Matador and A Caixa Preta, the last two written with Mia Couto.
Daniel Hahn is the author of a number of works of non-fiction. His translation of The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. He has translated the work of José Luís Peixoto, Philippe Claudel, María Dueñas, José Saramago, Eduardo Halfon, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Corsino Fortes, and others.
Daniel Hahn is the author of a number of works of non-fiction. His translation of The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. He has translated the work of José Luís Peixoto, Philippe Claudel, María Dueñas, José Saramago, Eduardo Halfon, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Corsino Fortes, and others.
Other books by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
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