Contradiction, history and politics in Season of the Rain, by José Eduardo Agualusa

This text analyzes the novel Season of the Rain, from the Angolan Jose Eduardo Agualusa, in which the writer makes use of historical events that occurred in Angola in the period of wars for independence as well as in the following years, showing them under another perspective. The novel is formed by a contradictory, historic and political text,evaluated from the historiographical metafiction concept, as leading the narrative between history and fiction, the author ends up proposing to the readers a new version of facts, by deconstructing myths and national heroes and questioning the value of a so stated independence in a country in ruins.

THE PORTUGUESE DIASPORA IN THREE CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE NOVELS: POINTS AND COUNTERPOINTS

In O retorno (2011), Dulce Maria Cardoso invite us to know the Rui’s story, a Portuguese Angolan teenager that returned from Angola, together his family. He is compelled to rebuild his life in Continental Portugal, from a precarious and limited financial situation. The scenario was the seventies and the turbulent period of return of more than a half million of Portuguese citizens, during the decolonization of former Portugal overseas territories in Africa. In this paper, we have analyzed the theme of diaspora in the contemporaneous Portuguese Literature, considering as the start point the sociocultural context contained in the book O retorno. Thus, we have established a bridge with two other novels, within a comparative perspective, in order to find similarities or dissimilarities among them, once they address the same theme: Pouca terra...Poucá terra, by Júlia Nery (1984), that brings to the center of the narrative the emigrants story from France, under the approach of a girl called  Leonor, and Livro, by José Luís Peixoto (2012), which has the main focus, among the multiplicity of themes, the emigration scenario from France, and the loving disagreements between two young lovers: Ilídio and Adelaide. The goal is to sketch a viewpoint, clarified by the cultural studies, which conduct us to understand more largely some questions which come by the Dulce Maria Cardoso novel, and also the two other books in question.  They give us the measure of the construction of the contemporaneous Portuguese novel, and reflect the idea of a nation which uses to have a condition of discomfort. This discomfort is proper to who are at the mercy of the diasporic fateful experience, since the most remote past.  

THE CARNAVALIZATION OF ANGOLAN SOCIETY IN “A GERAÇÃO DA UTOPIA”

This research aims to evaluate the changes occurred in the Angolan society, showed on the novel Generation of Utopia, written by Pepetela. This text fictionalizes a long historic period of Angola, since the last years of colonialism until some time after the country's independence and, in this sense, it shows the social changes on this historical / political moment. For this analysis, we use some important concepts used by cultural studies, especially the "Carnivalization", coined by Bakhtin. This process is permeated by inversions and contagions, the noble to the vulgar, high and low, popular and erudite, leaded by the dialog, which produces hybrid forms (also called grotesque). The compreension of most contemporary social transformations is made from "Transformation Metaphors" and, in this sense, one of the most useful is the “Carnivalization” that in the case of the Angolan society, represented by Pepetela, is better understood / evaluated from this bakhtinian concept.