Le parole, l’amore, il filo spinato. Luandino Vieira a Tarrafal

Abstract

The Indipendence’s war in the former portuguese African colonies, among which Angola, starts in 1961. The regime tries to slow down the course of history through the establishment of the state of emergency, censorship control and violence, resorting to the political police apparatus (PIDE) and to the dissidents’ imprisonment in concentration camps such as Tarrafal, in the Cabo Verde islands. Here Luandino Vieira, the most important author of Angolan literature, wrote the collection of short stories Luuanda, his masterpiece. During his imprisonment, Luandino Vieira’s figure becomes a point o reference for African national movements because of his courage and coherence in the political path towards the birth of the nation and because of the postcolonial intentions of his literature, far from egemonic mimicry and set into an original discourse of identity and angolanidade.