Angola Is Wherever I Plant My Field
“The only thing worse than hunger is the saudade.” Angola Is Wherever I Plant My Field is a collection of interlinked stories about Angolans living through and after war, colonialism, and rapid social change. It follows soldiers, refugees, street kids, migrant workers, minor officials, lovers, and loners as they try to survive, make money, fall in love, and understand who they are in a fractured country. Instead of a single campaign or hero, the book offers many viewpoints and a loose, episodic structure. It uses satire and allegory and keeps circling back to questions of voice, memory, and who gets to tell the story of Angola. The stories move from guerrilla camps and ruined villages to Luanda’s streets, Lisbon’s cafés, and imagined cities abroad. In each place, characters face hunger, corruption, desire, fear, and memory. Some try to become rich, some try to escape, some simply try to stay alive and keep their dignity. The tone mixes dark humor with grief, and the stories question fixed ideas about revolution, patriotism, race, and identity, showing how ordinary people improvise their lives under systems that rarely make sense. Spanning from roughly the 1960s liberation struggle through the height of the civil war and into the post war, oil rich era, Angola Is Wherever I Plant My Field gives a ground level sense of how history feels to people who are usually only numbers or footnotes. It chronicles lives shaped by improvisation, sarcasm, and stubborn hope, and will appeal to readers of contemporary African fiction, post colonial literature, and story collections that blend politics, irony, and intimate human drama.
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Bestselling author of mystery novels, weaving suspense and intrigue. Captivating readers with every page turn.
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Melo’s prose reveals to us a master of postmodern techniques of pastiche, interrupted narration, multiple or open endings and the explicit intervention of the narrator (and sometimes even the author) within the narrative plot.
Melo’s stories bring to mind the work of Borges and Ishiguro and some ineffable otherness that is his alone. Discovering his work could be the highlight of a literary career.
Angola is Wherever I Plant My Field is an intelligent, sometimes belligerent, collection of absurdist stories that address issues like colonialism, poverty, and race relations in Angola. Darkly funny, this collection of stories is a highly literary (perhaps even meta-literary) book not to be missed.
Melo's compelling prose is very attractive and spectacular, the open endings will leave you with mouth open and shivers all over your skin, an admirably innovative collection of short stories that I highly recommend you to read, João is hands down my newest favourite Writer, if you are a fan of Franz Kafka, Kazuo Ishiguro or Borges then I truly recommend you to grab a copy of ANGOLA IS WHEREVER I PLANT MY FIELD!!!
ANGOLA IS WHEREVER I PLANT MY FIELD is a book that balances lightness, humor and postcolonial realities with moments of darkness and postmodernism, this is delightfully odd and beautifully written. This book hooked me from the very first page, Melo's prose is original, clever and stunningly captivating.
For those of you who teach literature or modern African history, teach this! If you don’t, read it anyway. You’ll think, you might chuckle, and you will definitely learn something. Parabéns, João
The stories that drew me in were short and snappy, using humour, absurdity, exaggeration, wit, satirical leanings, and the existence of the truth mixed in to depict the complexity of Angolan society, history, and their present…these observations and conversations by our omniscient narrator reflects a knowledge that come from experience, from one who knows and understands the imprint of colonialism, the fight for independence, the political and ideological segregation, and the civil war that still resonates within the very fabric of the nation. Melo's collection has some gems that used satire, wit, and a dark, dry humour that really made the issues they tackled less traumatic.
I was taken by the title of this book, "Angola is Wherever I Plant My Field," and it kind of reminded me of the feeling of staying true to your roots… there are eighteen (18) stories to take you on a trip full of laughter, moments of reflection and most of all, keep you entertained…The writing style is something that also caught my attention, it reminded me of the kind of stories you could be told whilst in the company of a long lost friend, there's accounts of experiences here and there-some you laugh at, others you sigh, others you just nod and look away afraid that whatever you say would not do it justice. All in all, it was a pleasure reading this book.