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2010 Longlist

My Father’s Wives

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

In My Father’s Wives, reality and fiction run side by side, the former feeding into the latter. However, in the territories José Eduardo Agualusa crosses, fiction plays a part in reality too. The four characters in the novel which the author is writing as he travels accompany him from Luanda, the Angolan capital to Benguela and Namibe. They cross the Namibian sands and their ghost towns, reaching Cape Town. They carry on to Maputo, then Quelimane beside the Bon Sinais River, and thence to the island of Mozambique. They cross landscapes that border dreams, landscapes from which – here and there – the strangest characters emerge. My Father’s Wives is a novel about women, music and magic. These pages herald the rebirth of Africa, a continent afflicted by terrible problems but blessed with a talent for music, by the ever-renewed strength of its women and the secret power of ancient gods.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR José
Eduardo Agualusa

José Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo, Angola, in 1960, and is one of the leading literary voices in Angola and the Portuguese-speaking world. His novel Creole was awarded the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature, and The Book of Chameleons won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. Agualusa lives between Portugal, Angola and Brazil.

José Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo, Angola, in 1960, and is one of the leading literary voices in Angola and the Portuguese-speaking world. His novel Creole was awarded the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature, and The Book of Chameleons won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. Agualusa lives between Portugal, Angola and Brazil.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Daniel
Hahn

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator from Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Among other honors, he is the recipient of the Ottaway Award and his work has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and received the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Lewes, England.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator from Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Among other honors, he is the recipient of the Ottaway Award and his work has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and received the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Lewes, England.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

An original novel with an interesting and clever way of revealing modern society of Angola interweaving reality and fiction, in which life is made of many real situations.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
Angola
Original Language
Portugese
Publisher
Arcadia Books
Translator
Daniel Hahn

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