Creole - Mixed Media - Brief Article

New Internationalist, March, 2003 by Peter Whittaker

By Jose Eduardo Agualusa

translated by Daniel Hahn (Arcadia, ISBN 1900850 613)

The action in this sprightly novel by Angolan-born writer Jose Eduardo Agualusa occurs in the triangle set by the slave trade plying between Africa, Europe and Brazil. The book opens by plunging us into the evocative sights, sounds and smells of Angola's colonial capital Luanda, in the 1860s. Freshly arrived in the town is the gentleman adventurer, Fradique Mendes. Through his letters home we see the larger-than-life characters whose stories, sometimes magical, sometimes tragic, are at the heart of the narrative.

Luanda, built on the profits of the slave trade, is a place of indolence and intrigue -- something Fradique quickly discovers as plots and counter-plots are spun around him. Everyone, from the charismatic deformed priest Fra Nicolau dos Anjos to the beautiful ex-slave girl Ana Olimpia, requires him to serve their obscure purposes.

Following a bizarre series of events, including a murder on an alligator hunt, Fradique is forced to flee with Ana Olimpia on a slave ship to Brazil. Here he lives through slave revolts and emancipation before coming to a final realization of the corrupt nature of the colonial system in which he lives.

This is a splendid novel of high adventure, and the epistolary style, never an easy narrative form, is handled with confidence. Beyond the swashbuckling, though, Agualusa's purpose is to examine a society on the cusp of change, as a system built on slavery gives way to something more humane but also more uncertain. Using a structure of immediacy and drama, Agualusa has built a book that is both thought-provoking and highly enjoyable.

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