José Eduardo Agualusa

José Eduardo Agualusa is an Angolan novelist, journalist, and playwright, one of the most prominent African writers working in Portuguese. Born in Huambo, Angola (then Nova Lisboa), he studied agronomy and forestry in Lisbon before devoting himself to writing. A General Theory of Oblivion (2012, translated into English by Daniel Hahn in 2015) won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2017, with the prize split between Agualusa and translator Daniel Hahn. Originally published in Portuguese as A General Theory of Oblivion, the novel is based on the true story of Ludo, a Portuguese woman who walled herself into her Luanda apartment during the Angolan Civil War and lived there for nearly thirty years. Agualusa has received numerous international prizes, including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Book of Chameleons (2004, translated 2006) and the Dublin Literary Award shortlist multiple times. His other translated novels include Creole (2002), My Father's Wives (2007), and Rainy Season (2009). He divides his time between Luanda, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro and writes in Portuguese. He is considered one of the foremost practitioners of the novel form in Lusophone Africa, and his work frequently draws on Angola's colonial and postcolonial history.