Lit in Translation

A General Theory of Oblivion

Teoria Geral do Esquecimento

José Eduardo Agualusa (born 1960)

Translated by Daniel Hahn

English editions

In English

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Ludo, a Portuguese woman in Luanda, panics as unrest grips the city on the eve of Angola's independence. She seals off her flat with a brick wall, shutting out her neighbours and everything beyond, and stays inside for close to three decades, scraping by like a shipwrecked sailor while the capital below expands, rejoices and suffers. Over those years she fills notebooks with a journal, poems and thoughts, and sketches in charcoal across her walls; from these papers the narrator later reconstructs her life.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Genres
Historical (assigned by AI)
Set in
Angola
First published
2012 by Dom Quixote
Author's age
52 when first published
ISBN

9780914671312 (Archipelago Books, United States)

9781846558474 (Harvill Secker, United Kingdom)

9780099593126 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata