Welcome to the spring 2013 round of our Portuguese (-language) reading group! We invite anyone interested in Portuguese-language literature to join in. No need to speak Portuguese: all extracts and discussion is in English! A number of eminent translators such as Margaret Jull Costa, Daniel Hahn, Amanda Hopkinson and Nick Caistor take part in this friendly group, as well as newcomers.
We also invite editors from around the world to read the English samples, peruse the author pages and even come to our meet-up in June to hear more. (And Other Stories doesn’t publish many titles each year, so we’d be delighted if you followed up on one of these tips and published the author – do let us know!)
This time we feature three generations of Angolan writers:
Luandino Vieira (b. 1935) is one of the best and most awarded Angolan writers. A blend of oral traditions with modernist storytelling, Nosso Musseque (Our Musseque) is a short novel that captures the lives of a group of kids in the streets of Luanda as Angola fights for Independence.
José Eduardo Agualusa (b. 1960) has long been overdue in our Lusophone reading group. The Book of Chameleons (translated by Daniel Hahn) was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. Margaret Jull Costa’s translated extract from Teoria Geral do Esquecimento (A General Theory of Forgetting) is being requested widely in the publishing world. We’d love you to comment on the author page.
Published around the world, Ondjaki’s work brings Angola to life. Os Transparentes (The Transparent Ones) is a novel about the inhabitants of a tower block in Luanda, casting a sometimes whimsical, sometimes satirical eye on the current state of Angola.
We hope you’ll join us in reading these books. Add your comments to author pages and we’d love to see you at our London meet-up.
Meet-up:
6.30pm, Thursday 27th June 2013. Council Room, King’s College (Strand Campus), London. (And perhaps a pub afterwards.)
Firstly: Daniel Hahn, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his translation of José Eduardo Agualusa’s The Book of Chameleons, will in be conversation with our publisher Stefan Tobler, talking about Portuguese-language African literature and its translation.
Secondly: our usual open discussion about the reading group’s featured novels.
- Extracts in English have been added to this website – see the relevant author’s page. To read the whole book, order the titles online or in person at the European Bookshop (London) and other bookshops. If you have trouble finding a title we may have a copy in the office. Do email the Portuguese reading group co-ordinator Francisco Vilhena at info@andotherstories.org saying which book you would like to read.
- Read the excerpts or a whole book or two, then comment online via the author pages.
- Come to a meet-up to discuss what has been read. You can be sure of lively, well informed discussion (read: friendly disagreement!).
Reading period:
13 April 2013 – 27 June 2013
Meet-up:
6.30pm, Thursday 27th June 2013. Council Room, King’s College (Strand Campus), London. (And perhaps a pub afterwards.)
Firstly: a short panel discussion with translators David Brookshaw and Daniel Hahn in conversation with our publisher Stefan Tobler about the state of Portuguese-language African literature in translation.
Secondly: our usual open discussion about the reading group’s featured novels.