Pepetela

Pepetela's plays written during his government tenure also reflect the themes in As Aventuras de Ngunga. The first of the plays, A Corda, was the first full-length dramatic work to be published in post-independence Angola. It is a play that, in the words of Ana Mafalda Leite, is "didactic and more than a little ideological, making it of limited literary interest". The play is in one act and features two sides playing a game of tug-of-war over Angola. One side includes the Americans and their Angolan clients, while the other side consists of five guerilla fighters of various ethnicities representing the MPLA. The next play that Pepetela wrote, A Revolta da Casa dos Ídolos, takes place in the past, drawing parallels between the Kongo kingdom in the 16th century and Angola's struggle for independence. Leite writes, "The play remains didactic but it is innovative both in terms of its use of historical material, and especially in the complexities of the actual mise en scène".

As mentioned above, Pepetela published several novels during his time as a government minister. Of these Mayombe is among the best known. The novel is an account of Pepetela's time as a guerilla in the MPLA. The novel functions on two levels, one in which the characters' thoughts about the nature of the struggle for independence are explored, and another that narrates the "action and incidents" experienced by the nationalist fighters. Ana Mafalda Leite considers the novel to be both critical and heroic, both attempting to highlight the ethnic diversity supposedly celebrated by the MPLA and also illustrating the tribal divisions present in Angolan society, which would lead to the eventual civil war that tore the nation apart in the years from independence until 2002. Leite writes that "the theme of war assumes an heroic and epic dimension since it is a conflict which defines the foundation of the 'fatherland'".

His next novel of the decade, O Desejo de Kianda, published in 1995, continues to manifest the disillusionment exhibited in A Geração da Utopia. The novel takes more of a magical realist approach than any of Pepetela's former works, positing a situation where several of Luanda's largest buildings collapse into Kinaxixi square with all the inhabitants left unharmed. The heroine, a character named Carmina Cara de Cu, leaves her career as a government bureaucrat and becomes an arms dealer. In an essay on the novel comparing the collapse of the buildings that is the focal point of the novel to the attacks of September 11, 2001, Phillip Rothwell writes that the novel "in some ways continues Pepetela's profound and damning portrayal of a betrayed utopia". The next year he published a different sort of novel, A Gloriosa Família. This work examines the story of the Van Dúnem family, a prominent Angolan family of Dutch descent. Pepetela spent years researching the story of the Dutch in Angola in order to write the novel. This novel does not display the same cynical and disillusioned tone as his other novels of the decade did, instead being a broad historical narrative that does incorporate a somewhat magical realist tone. While this novel stands quite apart from much of the author's other work, the fascination with Angolan history prominent throughout his career probably comes to its truest fruition in this work.

Pepetela has continued to be a prolific writer throughout the 2000s. His work has taken a satirical turn with the series of "Jaime Bunda" novels, detective novels that cast a satirical view on life in Luanda in the new decade. Stephen Henighan writes that the character of Jaime Bunda, a bumbling detective with roots in two of Angola's most prominent families, represents the changes that the Luanda Creole population has undergone in the view of Pepetela. Rather than representing a revolutionary vanguard that will create a new Angolan identity, the Creoles of Luanda are depicted in the novels as a kleptocratic oligarchy. Jaime Bunda is a parody of James Bond, whose name stems from his oversized backside ("bunda" in Portuguese). The character is obsessed with both James Bond films and American private-eye novels, something that Henighan claims is "ideologically charged" and illustrates elements of Angola's underdevelopment. In the first of the novels, Jaime Bunda, agente secreto, published in 2001, the protagonist investigates a murder and rape that eventually leads him to a South African counterfeiter named Karl Botha, a reference to former South African prime minister P.W. Botha, who had mandated the South African intervention in Angola in the 1970s and 1980s. The second novel, Jaime Bunda e a Morte do Americano, published in 2003, is set in Benguela instead of Luanda, and deals with American influence in Angola, as Jaime Bunda investigates the murder of an American and tries to seduce an American FBI agent. This novel also presents Pepetela's critique of U.S. foreign policy, as the heavy-handed behavior of the Angolan police mirrors the ways that Americans dealt with suspected terrorists during the same period. The novels were published by the Portuguese publisher Dom Quixote and were extremely popular in Portugal, having also had some success in other European countries, such as Germany, where Pepetela had been relatively unknown in the past.

Pepetela has also written about Angola's earlier history in A Gloriosa Família and Lueji, and has expanded into satire with his series of Jaime Bunda novels. His most recent works include Predadores, a scathing critique of Angola's ruling classes, O Quase Fim do Mundo, a post-apocalyptic allegory, and O Planalto e a Estepe, a look at Angola's history and connections with other former communist nations. Pepetela won the Camões Prize, the world's highest honour for Lusophone literature, in 1997.

In the 1990s, Pepetela's writing continued to exhibit interest in Angola's history, but also began to examine the political situation in the country with a greater sense of irony and criticism. His first novel of the decade, the 1992 A geração da utopia, addresses many of the issues first raised in Mayombe, but from the perspective of the post-independence reality of Angola. The Angolan Civil War and intense corruption in the government both led to a questioning of the revolutionary values espoused in the earlier novel. Ana Mafalda Leite describes the novel as "a critical and sceptical book, not to say a book of disillusionment, certainly one far removed from Mayombe'sheroic virtues." In this novel, Pepetela analyzes his characters psychologically in greater depth than he had done in his earlier works and assumes a very critical stance. The novel, spanning three decades, is divided into four parts, each of which covers an important aspect of Angola's 20th century, including Portuguese colonial oppression, the war for independence, the civil war, and the brief respite from the war that occurred in the early 1990s. Pepetela's interest in history remained evident in this book, but his criticism of the Angolan establishment was something new that would reappear again and again.

Pepetela continued to write throughout the decade, publishing O cão e os Caluandas, a novel that looks at the inhabitants of Luanda and the changes that they have undergone since independence, one year after the publication of Yaka. The novel is notable for using the story of a German shepherd's wanderings through Luanda to structure it, and for containing a variety of narrative voices. In 1989, he published Lueji, a work similar to A Revolta na Casa dos Ídolos in that it draws parallels between Angolan history and the contemporary situation in the country. The novel juxtaposes the princess Lueji, an important figure in 17th-century Angolan history, with a young ballerina who is dancing the role of Lueji in a contemporary piece. In the words of Ana Mafalda Leite, "The author writes chronologically of the two women, whose lives eventually begin to merge in the novel." In the novel, Pepetela recreates the history of seventeenth century Angola. This is a project that he would undertake again with the 16th century in his 1994 novel A gloriosa família.

After leaving the government at the end of 1982, Pepetela began to focus exclusively on his writing, beginning work on his most ambitious novel to date, Yaka. Yaka, first published in 1984, is a sweeping historical novel that examines the lives of a family of Portuguese settlers who came to Benguela in the 19th century. A clear desire to research his own origins can be seen in Pepetela's choice to write Yaka. Pepetela himself, as mentioned earlier in this entry, is a descendant of Portuguese settlers in Benguela. Like Muana Puó, Yaka also incorporates traditional Angolan spiritual objects in its narrative technique. Where the first novel focuses on masks, Yaka uses a traditional wooden statue utilized by the yakas, social organizations dedicated to the prosecution of war, to structure the narrative. Ana Mafalda Leite writes, "Yaka symbolises at once the consciousness of traditional values and 'the anticipated spirit of nationality' of the new country". Yaka won the 1986 Angolan national prize for literature.

When Angola gained independence in 1975, Pepetela became the Vice Minister of Education in President Agostinho Neto's government. The author was a part of the government for seven years, submitting his resignation in 1982 to dedicate more time to his writing. During his tenure as Vice Minister he published several novels, including Mayombe, a novel that had been written when he was an active MPLA combatant in the early 1970s, the publication of which only came about with the explicit support of President Agostinho Neto. During this period, Pepetela diversified his writing, also writing two plays that focused on Angolan history and on revolutionary politics. Pepetela was part of the governing board of the Angolan Writers' Union throughout this period as well.

In 1972, Pepetela published his first novel, As Aventuras de Ngunga, a work that he intended for a small student audience. In this text, Pepetela explores the growth of Ngunga, a young MPLA guerrilla, using an epic and didactic tone. The novel introduces the reader, through the eyes of Ngunga, to the customs, geography, and psychology of Angola. Pepetela also used this work to create a dialogue between Angolan tradition and his revolutionary ideology, exploring which traditions should be nurtured, and which should be altered. As aventuras...is a novel that exemplifies Pepetela's early career, exhibiting a deep love for Angola, a desire to explore Angola's history and culture, a revolutionary spirit, and a didactic tone. The novel was written and published while Pepetela was fighting the colonial government on the Eastern Front in Angola. By contrast, Muana Puó and Mayombe were also written while he was serving on the front, but were not published until after Angolan independence.

Pepetela first went to Paris and then, in 1963, earned a scholarship to study Sociology in Algiers, where he was approached by Henrique Abranches from the MPLA to help create a Center for Angolan Studies. This Center became the focus of the young Pepetela's work for the next decade. Until 1969, Pepetela, Abranches, and other MPLA members worked together to document Angolan culture and society and publicize the MPLA's struggle. In 1969, the Center moved from Algiers to Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo. After the move to Brazzaville, Pepetela became more active in the MPLA's armed resistance against the Portuguese in the Cabinda region of Angola and on the Eastern Front. This time in the late 1960s and early 1970s served as the inspiration for one of Pepetela's most recognized works, the war narrative, Mayombe. During this time, Pepetela also wrote his first novel, Muana Puó. The novel was written during his time in Algiers and deals with Angolan culture, using the metaphor of traditional masks of the Chokwe people to expose different dichotomies present in Angolan culture. His novel displays the knowledge of indigenous Angolan cultures that Pepetela gained during his time on the Eastern Front of the war for independence. Muana Puó was never intended to be published, a detail Pepetela made clear in an interview with Michel Laban. The author had written the novel as an exercise for himself and several of his close friends to read; nevertheless, the novel was published in 1978, during Pepetela's tenure in the Angolan government.

Pepetela was born on October 19, 1941 in Benguela, Angola as Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos.