Fissured Ground: National History in Angolan Fiction, Origins to Independence

Angola, a nation formed by the transatlantic slave trade, has a unique identity in Africa, enshrined in its hybridized, outward-looking, Portuguese-speaking culture and expressed by its rich literature. The development of a distinctive national prose tradition can be found throughout colonial Angola’s fascinating history, shaped by the slave trade’s impact on the formation of Angolan society and the creation of a nascent mixed-race national bourgeoisie strongly connected to Brazil. Creolized Angolans imagined the future nation in their literature – a vision brought to fruition through nationalist activism. The emergence of anticolonial writers in the 1940s consolidated the fissures found in Angola in the buildup to its War of Independence (1961–75). Drawing from rich historical records, Stephen Henighan traces the race debates among proindependence groups and examines work by exiles writing in 1960s Paris and Algiers, guerrilla memoirs by women, fiction written in concentration camps, and Brazilian and Cuban influences on Angolan prose.