By José Eduardo Agualusa
Set in modern Angola, this ebook is set the panorama of reminiscence, its inconsistencies and its randomness.
Félix Ventura trades in an strange commodity; he's a broker in stories, clandestinely promoting new pasts to humans whose futures are safe and who lack just a sturdy lineage to accomplish their lives. during this thoroughly unique homicide secret, the place individuals are no longer who they appear and the briefest of connections results in the forging of solely new histories, a bookish albino, a gorgeous lady, a mysterious foreigner, and a witty speaking lizard come jointly to find the reality in their lives. Set in Angola, Agualusa's story darts from tormented previous to dream-filled current with a lightness that belies the savage background of a rustic during which many have anything to put out of your mind -- and to conceal.
a super American debut through some of the most lauded writers within the Portuguese-speaking international, this can be a superbly written and consistently impressive story of race, fact, and the transformative strength of creativity.
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Example text
I was going too fast; a man who was probably drunk suddenly stepped in front of my car. I braked violently and managed to avoid him, but my nerves were shaken. I was sweating profusely. A little farther on, I thought I recognized Lazare in the com pany of Monsieur Melou, in gray jacket and straw hat. I was sick with dread. ) At the hotel I declined to take the elevator and climbed the stairs. I threw myself onto one of the beds. I heard the sound of my heart inside my bones. I felt my veins beating, laboriously, in both temples.
Funnily enough, my sickly excitement gave way to calm; the strange, pervasive sound of her voice had filled me with semi-contented apathy. For a long while I looked at Xenie, not saying anything, smiling at her. I saw that she had on a navy-blue silk dress with a white collar, pale stockings, and white shoes. Under the dress her fig ure looked slender and pretty. Beneath the carefully combed black hair, her face was young. I was sorry I was so sick. I said to her without hypocrisy, "I find you very at tractive today .
She seems like someone from another world. There are people here, workers, who felt ill-at-ease with her. They admired her, then they ran into her at the Criolla. Here at the Criolla she looked like a spook. Her friends they were sitting at the same table - were appalled. They couldn't understand her being here. One day, one of them started drinking, in exasperation. He lost his head. He ordered a bottle, just the way you did. ,He emptied glass after glass. I thought he'd end up in bed with her.