Jose E. Agualusa Libri

Jose Eduardo Agualusa's brilliant debut novel about the transformative power of creativity, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2016 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 keeps herself busy by writing her story on the walls of her home. The outside world slowly seeps into Ludo's life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of a man fleeing his pursuers and a note attached to a bird's foot. Until one day she meets Sabalu, a young boy from the street who climbs up to her terrace.

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 ferocity after rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement refused to accept defeat in the country's first free and democratic elections.

A dark literary comedy about an island literary festival that goes horribly - apocalyptically - wrong. By the winner of the Dublin Literary Award.