A journalist - the autobiographical features are quite deliberate - is trying to find out what happened to Lidia, who disappeared in Luanda in 1992, a point in time when the civil war flared up again with unprecedented ferocity after rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement refused to accep[...]

This is the brilliant new novel from the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. On the eve of Angolan independence, Ludo bricks herself into her apartment, where she will remain for the next thirty years. She lives off vegetables and pigeons, burns her furniture and books to stay alive and[...]

When the celebrated Angolan musician Faustino Manso dies, his youngest daughter Laurentina journeys to Angola to trace the story of the father she never knew. Setting out to find the 7 wives and 18 children he left scattered across southern Africa, the fictional account of Laurentina's journey runs [...]