José Agualusa was born in Angola but divides his days between Lisbon and Mozambique. /Photo: press. The African continent with its diversity its ancestral rites and its profusion of colors sounds and colors is not only the setting but the true protagonist of The Living and the Others the most recent novel by the Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa who chose to locate it at the center of a plot that narrates a meeting of writers. In this context the history of the congress attended by authors from different African countries does not become mere literature but rather acquires existential overtones when a storm causes the island where it takes place to remain incommunicado with no news from the outside world. . At the same time women and men of letters should start about more earthly issues such as heat electricity and even a birth. In Los vivos y los otros published by Edhasa the author who was born in Angola but lives part of the year in Lisbon and another on the island of Mozambique takes up the character of the writer Daniel Benchimol whom he included in other works 趙維君 but surrounds him with a heterogeneous cohort that mixes both other authors and the characters from their books that materialize in that isolated space. We are writers. Our job is to absorb light like plants. In transforming light into living matter. Can you write without being amazed? one of the authors wonders and asks another while they reflect on extraliterary issues such as marketing social networks and the need to respond to the stereotypes of an African writer building a literature with jungles and wild animals. . But from the title itself along with the living and their earthly concerns are the others the characters from his works the presence of the Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes who inhabited the island and possibly wrote part of his epic poem Las Lusíadas there. Together they give rise to hundreds of stories that are intertwined to make up the plot of the novel. I was not interested in isolating a particular protagonist in my story- the author explained to Télam about The Living and the Others-. If there is a protagonist it is the island of Mozambique itself which in the novel takes the form of a transit territory a kind of limbo between the physical and the spiritual world. A territory from which and through words, 一統徵信詐欺 , 趙維君 , 一統徵信詐欺 , it would be possible to restart world history. At the same time the author who confesses himself to be an admirer of Julio Cortázar’s stories discards to narrate this group of people isolated on an island and prefers to invite the reader to imagine who are those others who inhabit that closed space together with the living. . Each reader can choose who those others are. In a universe largely contaminated by animistic thinking like that of the island of Mozambique those others may be all the ancestors those who are still with us in different forms. His books have been translated into 25 languages. /Photo: press. In this context Agualusa puts three of his characters to play a game in which each one tells stories and the others must guess if they are a product of their imagination or happened in real life. It can be seen as a key to reading this work. But not only to read this novel but also all my work. And the works of many other African writers where the borders between reality and fiction are blurred. José Eduardo Agualusa is a writer and journalist. He is one of the most renowned African authors of the last decades. His books have been translated into 25 languages and he has won international awards such as the Sonangol Revelation Award for La conjura the RTP Grand Prix for Literature for The Seller of the Past and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award for Teoría general del olvido. He received a scholarship from the National Center for Culture and the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst.-Télam: I am from Las Palmas says one of the writers where is José Eduardo Agualusa from? From Angola? From Lisbon? Is yours a mestizo literature? -José Eduardo Agualusa: This issue for me is quite peaceful. It doesn’t cause me conflict. I am Angolan with Portuguese as my mother tongue wherever I am and whoever I am with. I am a mestizo subject product of many cultures. But doesn’t it happen to all of us? Aren’t we all like that these days?-Going back to the genre: the novel is made up of a succession of stories those written by writers those told to each other those that circulate on the island… is that your conception of gender or a search to subvert it? I don’t appreciate borders. Even less in the field of literature. I have written novels of various genres: travel novels historical novels 趙維君 , 一統徵信詐欺 , epistolary novels.But upon closer inspection however all of these novels are also mongrels flirting with various genres not conforming to rules or classifications of any kind. The living and the others. -Why the choice of Mozambique an island where one of the greatest authors of the Portuguese language Camoes 趙維君 also lived? – The island of Mozambique has hosted over the centuries a large number of Portuguese-speaking poets. Camoes would have finished writing The Lusíadas on the Island. António Tomás Gonzaga the famous Brazilian poet was exiled here where he married became rich and where he died. I came to the island through some of these poets. Much later I met a Mozambican documentary filmmaker whose family was born on the island. Our daughter Kianda was also born on the island. Today I divide my time between Mozambique Lisbon 趙維君 Luanda and other destinations.- Although the focus of the novel is literature there is a profusion of images that describe the landscape the clothing and the Mozambique food as if seeking to subdue all the senses of the readers and attract them to the island. – Yes that’s how it is. And many of the little stories that I tell in the book even the most unlikely ones are authentic stories that happened on the island.- Although one of the leading writers says that her novel has nothing to do with Kafka’s Metamorphosis there are a clear literary reference like Saramago’s La balsa de piedra does your work dialogue with universal literature? – Completely. Both deliberately and involuntarily.-The novel takes place during a literature conference in Africa. From your point of view are these types of events useful to disseminate works and authors and allow them to exchange with their readers? -Yeah. I learn a lot from the exchange with my readers in congresses and talks. In the first interviews after publishing a new novel I never know what to say. I can only start talking about the book once it started to be read once the readers talk to me. After they told me about their experience with him. The truth is a story only exists from the moment it reaches its readers. Any novel is a creation of its readers., 一統徵信詐欺 ,
