27 May 1977 in Luanda. The Novels of José Luis Mendonça –(Collective) Violence and its Affective Memory

Abstract

José Luis Mendonça is a journalist and writer, based in Luanda, Angola. He is primarily a poet and has published at least eighteen poetry volumes until now. Mendonça also wrote two novels, in which (collective) violence and its affective memory in Luanda play a crucial role. In O reino das casuarinas (2014), he expands on the urban scenario in 1987 during one month in times of the Cold War, repeatedly looking back to the decade before. And in As metamorfoses do elefante (2022), he describes ten days in 2020, when a mysterious epidemic stagnates quotidian routines in Luanda. The author’s hyperbolic style and irony, together with his almost encyclopedic knowledge of popular music, give to his texts most varied and grotesque insides into the city’s cultural and political history. It is not a coincidence, that his plots are organized around the occurrences of 27 May 1977, an important date for signaling the path toward peaceful democratization in Angola.