Works, including the novel Things Fall Apart (1958), of Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe describe traditional African life in conflict with colonial rule and westernization. This poet and critic served as professor at Brown University. People best know and most widely read his first book in modern African literature. Christian parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria reared Achebe, who excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. World religions and traditional African cultures fascinated him, who began stories as a university student. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian broadcasting service and quickly moved to the metropolis of Lagos. He gained worldwide attention in the late 1950s; his later novels include No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe defended the use of English, a "language of colonizers," in African literature. In 1975, controversy focused on his lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" for its criticism of Joseph Conrad as "a bloody racist." When the region of Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe, a devoted supporter of independence, served as ambassador for the people of the new nation. The war ravaged the populace, and as starvation and violence took its toll, he appealed to the people of Europe and the Americas for aid. When the Nigerian government retook the region in 1970, he involved in political parties but witnessed the corruption and elitism that duly frustration him, who quickly resigned. He lived in the United States for several years in the 1970s, and after a car accident left him partially disabled, he returned to the United States in 1990. Novels of Achebe focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of values during and after the colonial era. His style relied heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory. He also published a number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections. He served as the David and Marianna Fisher university professor of Africana studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. ollowing a brief illness, Achebe died.

Mhlongo was born in Midway-Chiawelo, Soweto, the seventh of nine children, and raised in Soweto. His father, who died when Mhlongo was a teenager, worked as a post-office sweeper. Mhlongo was sent to Limpopo Province, the province his mother came from, to finish high school. Initially failing his matriculation exam in October 1990,[1] Mhlongo completed his matric at Malenga High School in 1991. He studied African literature and political studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, gaining a BA in 1996. In 1997 he enrolled to study law there, transferring to the University of Cape Town the following year. In 2000 he discontinued university study to write his first novel, Dog Eat Dog.[2] He has been called, "one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa's post-apartheid literary scene".[1] Mhlongo has presented his work at key African cultural venues, including the Caine Prize Workshop and the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and was a 2008 International Writing Program fellow at the University of Iowa.[3] His work has been translated into Spanish and Italian.

Christopher Abani (or Chris Abani) is a Nigerian author. He was a political prisoner in Nigeria at various times during 1985 and 1991. At times he was held in solitary confinement and he was held on death row for some time after being sentenced to death for treason. He is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the 2001 Prince Claus Awards, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Selections of his poetry appear in the online journal Blackbird.

Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan short story writer. Her book, Tropical Fish won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, best first book, Africa, and an AWP Short Fiction Award. She has graduated from Makerere University with a JD, and from the University of Maryland with an MFA. While at Makerere University Baingana was an active member of FEMRITE - Uganda Women Writers Association, which she has referred to as "a literary home of sorts". Her work has appeared in AGNI, Glimmer Train, African American Review, Callaloo, The Guardian, and Kwani. She currently resides in Uganda

Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.

Yvonne Vera (September 19, 1964 – April 7, 2005) was an award-winning author from Zimbabwe. Her novels are known for their poetic prose, difficult subject-matter, and their strong women characters, and are firmly rooted in Zimbabwe's difficult past. For these reasons, she has been widely studied and appreciated by those studying postcolonial African literature. Vera was born in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, to Jerry Vera and Ericah Gwetai. At the age of eight, she worked as a cotton-picker near Hartley. She attended Mzilikazi High School and then taught English literature at Njube High School, both in Bulawayo. In 1987 she travelled to Canada and she married John Jose, a Canadian whom she had met while he was teaching at Njube. At York University, Toronto, she completed an undergraduate degree, a master's and a PhD, and taught literature. In 1995, Vera returned to Zimbabwe and in 1997 became director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, a gallery that showcases local talent ranging from that of professional artists to school children. In 2004 she went back to Canada, where she died on April 7, 2005, of AIDS-related meningitis. (from Wikipedia)

Kenyan teacher, novelist, essayist, and playwright, whose works function as an important link between the pioneers of African writing and the younger generation of postcolonial writers. After imprisonment in 1978, Ngũgĩ abandoned using English as the primary language of his work in favor of Gikuyu, his native tongue. The transition from colonialism to postcoloniality and the crisis of modernity has been a central issues in a great deal of Ngũgĩ's writings. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru, Kiambu District, as the fifth child of the third of his father's four wives. At that time Kenya was under British rule, which ended in 1963. Ngũgĩ's family belonged to the Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Gikuyu. His father, Thiong'o wa Nducu, was a peasant farmer, who was forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Ngũgĩ attended the mission-run school at Kamaandura in Limuru, Karinga school in Maanguu, and Alliance High School in Kikuyu. During these years Ngũgĩ became a devout Christian. However, at school he also learned about the Gikuyu values and history and underwent the Gikuyu rite of passage ceremony. Later he rejected Christianity, and changed his original name in 1976 from James Ngũgĩ, which he saw as a sign of colonialism, to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in honor of his Gikuyu heritage. After receiving a B.A. in English at Makerere University College in Kampala (Uganda) in 1963, Ngũgĩ worked briefly as a journalist in Nairobi. He married in 1961. Over the next seventeen years his wife, Nyambura, gave birth to six children. In 1962 Ngũgĩ's play THE BLACK HERMIT was produced in Kampala. In 1964 he left for England to pursue graduate studies at the Leeds University in England. The most prominent theme in Ngũgĩ's early work was the conflict between the individual and the community. As a novelist Ngũgĩ made his debut with WEEP NOT, CHILD (1964), which he started to write while he was at school in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African author. Ngũgĩ used the Bildungsroman form to tell the story of a young man, Njoroge. He loses his opportunity for further education when he is caught between idealistic dreams and the violent reality of the colonial exploitation. THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965) had as its background the Mau Mau Rebellion (1952-1956). The story was set in the late 1920s and 1930s and depicted an unhappy love affair in a rural community divided between Christian converts and non-Christians. A GRAIN OF WHEAT (1967) marked Ngũgĩ's break with cultural nationalism and his embracing of Fanonist Marxism. Ngũgĩ refers in the title to the biblical theme of self-sacrifice, a part of the new birth: "unless a grain of wheat die." The allegorical story of one man's mistaken heroism and a search for the betrayer of a Mau Mau leader is set in a village, which has been destroyed in the war. The author's family was involved in the Mau Mau uprising. Ngũgĩ's older brother had joined the movement, his stepbrother was killed, and his mother was arrested and tortured. Ngũgĩ's village suffered in a campaign. In the 1960s Ngũgĩ was a reporter for the Nairobi Daily Nation and editor of Zuka from 1965 to 1970. He worked as a lecturer at several universities - at the University College in Nairobi (1967-69), at the Makerere University in Kampala (1969-70), and at the Northwestern University in Evanston in the United States (1970-71). Ngũgĩ had resigned from his post at Nairobi University as a protest against government interference in the university, be he joined the faculty in 1973, becoming an associate professor and chairman of the department of literature. It had been formed in response to his and his colleagues' criticism of English - the British government had made in the 1950s instruction in English mandatory. Ngũgĩ had asked in an article, written with Taban lo Liyong and Henry Owuor-Anyumba, "If there is need for a 's

Marlene van Niekerk is a South African author who is best known for her novel Triomf. Her graphic and controversial descriptions of a poor Afrikaner family in Johannesburg brought her to the forefront of a post-apartheid society, still struggling to come to terms with all the changes in South Africa. In translation by Leon de Kock, this book was critically acclaimed in the US and UK, and was filmed in 2008. Van Niekerk studied Languages and Philosophy at Stellenbosch University. While here, she wrote three plays for the lay theatre. In 1979 she moved to Germany to join theatres in Stuttgart and Mainz as apprentice for directing. From 1980 to 1985 she continued her studies of philosophy in The Netherlands. Back in South Africa she lectured in Philosophy at the University of Zululand, and later at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. Afterwards she was lecturer in Afrikaans and Dutch Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand. Although she made her debut as a poet in 1977 and subsequently published another volume of poetry and a volume of short stories, it was the publication of Triomf in 1994 which catapulted her to fame. Her long-awaited second novel, Agaat (2004) was equally critically acclaimed. It was translated by fellow novelist, Michiel Heyns, and appeared in the UK and US as The Way of the Women. Her third novel, Memorandum: A Story with Pictures (also translated by Heyns) appeared in 2006. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Stellenbosch.

Binyavanga Wainaina was a short story writer, essayist, and journalist. He was the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya, and he directed the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and wrote for many journals, including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, One Story, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper's, Granta, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.

Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, a novelist, poet and playwright. Although he spent his early childhood in Soweto (where he knew political figures such as Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela) he had to finish his education in Lesotho where his father went into exile since 1963. This change of setting also meant a change of language for Mda: from isiXhosa to Sesotho. Consequently Mda preferred to write his first plays in English. His first play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, won the first Amstel Playwright of the Year Award in 1978, a feat he repeated the following year. He worked as a bank clerk, a teacher and in marketing before the publication of We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and Other Plays in 1980 enabled him to be admitted to the Ohio University for a three-year Master's degree in theatre. He completed a Masters Degree in Theatre at Ohio University, after which he obtained a Master of Arts Degree in Mass Communication. By 1984 his plays were performed in the USSR, the USA, and Scotland as well as in various parts of southern Africa. Mda then returned to Lesotho, first working with the Lesotho National Broadcasting Corporation Television Project and then as a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Lesotho. Between 1985 and 1992 he was director of the Theatre-For-Development Project at the university and founded the Marotholi Travelling Theatre. Together with his students he travelled to villages in remote mountain regions working with local people in creating theatre around their everyday concerns. This work of writing theatre "from the inside" was the theme of his doctoral thesis, the Ph.D degree being conferred on him by the University of Cape Town in 1989. In the early nineties Mda spent much of his time overseas, he was writer-in-residence at the University of Durham (1991), research fellow at Yale University. He returned for one year to South Africa as Visiting Professor at the School of Dramatic Art at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is presently Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio University.

Fatou Diome est née en 1968 sur la petite île de Niodior, dans le delta du Saloum, au sud-ouest du Sénégal. Elle est élevée par sa grand-mère. Contrairement à ce qu'exigent les traditions de sa terre natale, elle côtoie les hommes plutôt que d'aller aider les femmes à préparer les repas et assurer les tâches ménagères. Toujours en décalage avec le microcosme de l'île, elle décide d'aller à l'école et apprend le français. Sa grand-mère met un certain temps à accepter le fait qu'elle puisse être éduquée : la petite Fatou doit aller à l'école en cachette jusqu'à ce que son instituteur parvienne à convaincre son aïeule de la laisser poursuivre. Elle se passionne alors pour la littérature francophone. À treize ans, elle quitte son village pour aller poursuivre ses études dans d'autres villes du Sénégal tout en finançant cette vie nomade par de petits boulots : elle va au lycée de M'bour, travaille comme bonne en Gambie et finit par entamer des études universitaires à Dakar. À ce moment, elle songe à devenir professeur de français, loin de l'idée de quitter son pays natal. Mais à vingt-deux ans, elle tombe amoureuse d'un Français, se marie et décide de le suivre en France. Rejetée par la famille de son époux, elle divorce deux ans plus tard et se retrouve en grande difficulté, abandonnée à sa condition d'immigrée sur le territoire français. Pour pouvoir subsister et financer ses études, elle doit faire des ménages pendant six ans, y compris lorsqu'elle peut exercer la fonction de chargée de cours durant son DEA, fonction qui lui apporte un revenu insuffisant pour vivre. En 1994, elle s'installe en Alsace. Elle est étudiante à l'université de Strasbourg où elle termine aujourd'hui son Doctorat ès lettres sur Le Voyage, les échanges et la formation dans l'œuvre littéraire et cinématographique de Sembène Ousmane, tout en donnant des cours. Elle se consacre également à l'écriture : elle a publié La Préférence nationale, un recueil de nouvelles, aux éditions Présence africaine en 2001. Le Ventre de l'Atlantique est son premier roman, paru en 2003 aux éditions Anne Carrière. Son second roman, Kétala, paraît en 2006.

Born in Kumasi, Ghana, Ali went to the United States in 1988 to study.[1] He is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and Bennington College. His first book, a collection of short stories titled The Prophet of Zongo Street, was published in 2006 and received positive reviews. Ali has acknowledged being influenced in the writing of this book by V. S. Naipaul's Miguel Street. He has published short stories and non-fiction essays in several publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, Mississippi Review, BOMB, Gathering of the Tribes, and Essence. Ali now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي) was born in 1931, in a small village outside Cairo. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together, and she graduated from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. For two years, she practiced as a medical doctor, both at the university and in her native Tahla. From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down. From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World. In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996. In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution. Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world. She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.

Journalist and a biologist, his works in Portuguese have been published in more than 22 countries and have been widely translated. Couto was born António Emílio Leite Couto. He won the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 2013 Camões Prize for Literature, one of the most prestigious international awards honoring the work of Portuguese language writers (created in 1989 by Portugal and Brazil). An international jury at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair called his first novel, Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land), "one of the best 12 African books of the 20th century." In April 2007, he became the first African author to win the prestigious Latin Union Award of Romanic Languages, which has been awarded annually in Italy since 1990. Stylistically, his writing is heavily influenced by magical realism, a style popular in modern Latin American literature, and his use of language is inventive and reminiscent of Guimarães Rosa. Português) Filho de portugueses que emigraram para Moçambique nos meados do século XX, Mia nasceu e foi escolarizado na Beira. Com catorze anos de idade, teve alguns poemas publicados no jornal Notícias da Beira e três anos depois, em 1971, mudou-se para a cidade capital de Lourenço Marques (agora Maputo). Iniciou os estudos universitários em medicina, mas abandonou esta área no princípio do terceiro ano, passando a exercer a profissão de jornalista depois do 25 de Abril de 1974. Trabalhou na Tribuna até à destruição das suas instalações em Setembro de 1975, por colonos que se opunham à independência. Foi nomeado diretor da Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM) e formou ligações de correspondentes entre as províncias moçambicanas durante o tempo da guerra de libertação. A seguir trabalhou como diretor da revista Tempo até 1981 e continuou a carreira no jornal Notícias até 1985. Em 1983 publicou o seu primeiro livro de poesia, Raiz de Orvalho, que inclui poemas contra a propaganda marxista militante. Dois anos depois demitiu-se da posição de diretor para continuar os estudos universitários na área de biologia. Além de ser considerado um dos escritores mais importantes de Moçambique, é o escritor moçambicano mais traduzido. Em muitas das suas obras, Mia Couto tenta recriar a língua portuguesa com uma influência moçambicana, utilizando o léxico de várias regiões do país e produzindo um novo modelo de narrativa africana. Terra Sonâmbula, o seu primeiro romance, publicado em 1992, ganhou o Prémio Nacional de Ficção da Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos em 1995 e foi considerado um dos doze melhores livros africanos do século XX por um júri criado pela Feira do Livro do Zimbabué. Na sua carreira, foi também acumulando distinções, como os prémios Vergílio Ferreira (1999, pelo conjunto da obra), Mário António/Fundação Gulbenkian (2001), União Latina de Literaturas Românicas (2007) ou Eduardo Lourenço (2012). Ganhou em 2013 o Prémio Camões, o mais importante prémio para autores de língua portuguesa.

Mohamed Magani is an Algerian writer and lecturer in social science, and the author of a number of novels and non-fiction studies in French. In 1987 he was awarded the Grand Prix Littéraire International de la Ville d'Alger for his novel La Faille du ciel. He has also published the novels Esthétique de boucher, Un Temps berlinois (2001), Le refuge des ruines (2002), Une guerre se meurt (2004), Scène de pêche en Algiers [Fishing scene in Algeria:] and the soon-to-be published Le bruit d'une goutte d'eau. He has also published two short story collections in English, An Icelandic Dream (1993) and Please Pardon Our Appearance Whilst We Redress the Window Display (1995). His works have been translated into German, Italian, English, Serbo-Croatian and Dutch. Mohamed Magani is the founder and current president of PEN Algeria, and a board member of PEN International. He was a participant of the University of Iowa's Internationa Writing Program in 1985 and in 2007.

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. He studied literature at the University of Jos and taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi, before moving to Lagos to work as a journalist. In Lagos he wrote his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which won the Caine Prize in 2001. Waiting for an Angel has been translated into many languages including Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and French. In 2002, he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. After his fellowship he enrolled for a PhD in Creative Writing. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and in 2006 he co-edited the British Council's anthology, NW14: The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in February 2007. He currently teaches Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children.

Leila Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan where she attended the Khartoum American School and Sister School. She graduated from Khartoum University in 1985 with a degree in Economics and was awarded her Masters degree in statistics from the London School of Economics. She lived for many years in Aberdeen where she wrote most of her works while looking after her family; she currently lives and lectures in Abu Dhabi. She was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000 for her short story The Museum and her novel The Translator was nominated for the Orange Prize in 2002, and was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times in 2006.

Ndalu de Almeida (born 1977) is a writer from Angola, writing under the pen name Ondjaki. He lives in Luanda, the capital of the country, and has written poetry, children's books, short stories, novels, drama and film scripts. Ondjaki studied sociology at the University of Lisbon, and wrote his graduation paper about Angolan writer Luandino Vieira. His literary debut came in 2002 with the novella O Assobiador (The Whistler), which was followed up with the childhood memoir Bom dia camaradas (Good Morning, Comrades) in 2003. To date (2010) he has published four novels, three collections of short stories, two collections of poetry and three children's books. His books have been translated to French, Spanish, Italian, German, English, Chinese and Swedish Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondjaki Ondjaki was born in Luanda in 1977. He completed his degree in Sociology in Lisbon in 2002 with a study on the great Angolan writer Luandino Vieira. A versatile young talent and a most promising writer of the Portuguese language in Africa, he has already had paintings exhibited, given public performances as an actor, as well as published his own poems and novels. Ondjaki has been awarded the Grande Prémio de Conto Camilo Castelo Branco 2008 by the Portuguese Writers' Association for his novel Os da Minha Rua. In 2008 he was distinguished with the Grinzane for Africa award, in the category of young writer, and recently, Ondjaki has won the prestigious Jabuti Prize 2010 with his juvenile book AvóDezanove e o Segredo do Soviético. Source: http://www.mertin-litag.de/authors\_ht...

«José Eduardo Agualusa [Alves da Cunha] nasceu no Huambo, Angola, em 1960. Estudou Silvicultura e Agronomia em Lisboa, Portugal. Os seus livros estão traduzidos em 25 idiomas. Escreveu várias peças de teatro: "Geração W", "Aquela Mulher", "Chovem amores na Rua do Matador" e "A Caixa Preta", estas duas últimas juntamente com Mia Couto. Beneficiou de três bolsas de criação literária: a primeira, concedida pelo Centro Nacional de Cultura em 1997 para escrever « Nação crioula », a segunda em 2000, concedida pela Fundação Oriente, que lhe permitiu visitar Goa durante 3 meses e na sequência da qual escreveu « Um estranho em Goa » e a terceira em 2001, concedida pela instituição alemã Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Graças a esta bolsa viveu um ano em Berlim, e foi lá que escreveu « O Ano em que Zumbi Tomou o Rio ». No início de 2009 a convite da Fundação Holandesa para a Literatura, passou dois meses em Amsterdam na Residência para Escritores, onde acabou de escrever o romance, « Barroco tropical ». Escreve crónicas para o jornal brasileiro O Globo, a revista LER e o portal Rede Angola. Realiza para a RDP África "A hora das Cigarras", um programa de música e textos africanos. É membro da União dos Escritores Angolanos.» http://www.agualusa.pt/cat.php?catid=27 ——- José Eduardo Agualusa (Alves da Cunha) is an Angolan journalist and writer born to white Portuguese settlers. A native of Huambo, Angola, he currently resides in both Lisbon and Luanda. He writes in Portuguese. He has previously published collections of short stories, novels, a novella, and - in collaboration with fellow journalist Fernando Semedo and photographer Elza Rocha - a work of investigative reporting on the African community of Lisbon, Lisboa Africana (1993). He has also written Estação das Chuvas, a biographical novel about Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, the Angolan poet and historian who disappeared mysteriously in Luanda in 1992. His novel Nação Crioula (1997) was awarded the Grande Prémio Literário RTP. It tells the story of a secret love between the fictional Portuguese adventurer Carlos Fradique Mendes (a creation of the 19th century novelist Eça de Queiroz) and Ana Olímpia de Caminha, a former slave who became one of the wealthiest people in Angola. Um Estranho em Goa ("A stranger in Goa", 2000) was written on the occasion of a visit to Goa by the author. Agualusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007 for the English translation of his novel The Book of Chameleons, translated by Daniel Hahn. He is the first African writer to win the award since its inception in 1990. (wikipedia)