Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Angolan writers have dealt with nationalism and national identity in their works from the 1960s onwards, studying specifically the different places assigned to the anti-colonial war on the one hand, and the civil war on the other in Angolan novels.

Paper long abstract:

This paper questions the relations between literature, war and nationalism in Angola, and their evolution from a context of anti-colonial struggle followed by civil war and single-party dictatorship, to multi-party politics, capitalism and "peace". It explores the ways in which novels, novellas and poetry written by Angolan writers have dealt with nationalism and violence from the 1960s until nowadays, focusing specifically on the contrast between the civil war on the one hand and the anti-colonial war on the other in Angolan literature.

In the second half of the twentieth century, nationalism and the nationalist struggle became one of the most important themes of Angolan literature, the "raison d'être" of many writers. In the context of the struggle against Portuguese colonialism, literature was considered a nationalist weapon, which denounced the brutality of colonialism while testifying to the country's people, culture, and national aspirations, making the liberation war a founding element of the Angolan nation.

How have Angolan nationalism and literature evolved after independence? How (if at all) has nationalism survived twenty-seven years of civil conflict, and how did Angolan novelists write about this war? By analysing novels by Pepetela, Manuel Rui and Boaventura Cardoso, and comparing them with fictions from younger authors such as Jose Eduardo Agualusa and Ondjaki, I intend to identify the ongoing nationalist project present in Angolan literature, and examine the latter's complex relation to political power in Angola.