Luuanda     by Jose Luandino Vieira, Translated by Tamara Bender and D Hill Original language: Portuguese Country: Angola   Published by Heinemann Pub. Date: June 1980 Format: Paperback, 118 pages Dimensions: 0.50 x 7.50 x 5.00 in. ISBN: 0435902229 List Price: $8.95, £5.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £5.99 Published by Heinemann Pub. Date: 1980 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 128 pages Not available for ordering

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Three stories make up Luuanda, ‘Grandma Xíxi and her grandson Zeca Santos’, ‘The tale of the thief and the parrot’ and ‘The tale of the hen and the egg’. The characters who inhabit these stories all reflect the precariousness of life in the shanty towns of Luanda. Hunger reduces Grandma Xíxi to eating dahlia bulbs. An accident leads a former railway switchman to drug use. Young women become prostitutes. An old man and a crippled boy end up in jail for stealing ducks.


The shanty towns have little in common with the city’s commercial centre or its affluent white suburbs. Europeans are barely even given off-stage roles. They are commented on as policemen, or unknown fathers of mulatto children, or the shadowy criminal mastermind in ‘The tale of the thief and the parrot’ known as Kabulu, a Kimbundu name for the rabbit hero of many folk tales:

‘“That whiteman had his own magic, no one ever caught him, even if his name was given.

“Ach! Magic? Shit! Maybe, but it’s his cousin!”

“Sure, but even with a cousin in the police they could’ve grabbed him to pay the fine and nothing like that’s ever happened.”’p40

The Kimbundu language and its oral culture are an integral part of this book. ‘The tale of the hen and the egg’ in particular has the feel of a traditional story, complete with a moral at the end. A woman is disputing the ownership of an egg which her hen has laid in her neighbour’s backyard. A series of characters are called upon to try and resolve the problem. The shopkeeper, the seminary student, the landlord, the notary’s former assistant and the soldier all fail to offer a satisfactory answer. But, through a trick carried out by two little boys, the affair is settled in a spirit of general good will. The voice of the storyteller concludes the tale:

‘My tale.

If it’s pretty, if it’s ugly, only you know. But I swear I didn’t tell a lie and that these affairs happened in this our land of Luanda.’ p109