My Father's Wives
SynopsisPlot
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 parallel with the author's chronicle of the novel's genesis. As the characters and their creator travel the southern African coast-from Angola through Namibia and South Africa to Mozambique-they meet extraordinary people and, along the way, discover Faustino's secrets.
Story
About this book
When the celebrated Angolan musician Faustino Manso dies, his youngest daughter Laurentina sets out for Angola to piece together the life of a father she barely knew. Her search leads her across southern Africa, tracking down the seven wives and eighteen children Faustino left scattered through several countries. The route follows the coast from Angola through Namibia and South Africa to Mozambique, and the people Laurentina encounters along the way slowly fill in the shape of a man defined by his restlessness and his secrets.
The novel operates on two parallel tracks. One is Laurentina's fictional journey. The other is José Eduardo Agualusa's own account of how the book came into being, a chronicle of the writing process running alongside the story it produces. Characters and author travel the same geography, sometimes meeting the same people, blurring the line between invention and documentation. Agualusa, one of the most widely translated writers from Angola, sets much of his fiction against the country's recent history and its connections to the wider Portuguese-speaking world.
The book was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Its structure turns a family search into a broader map of southern African life, where personal history and national borders overlap in unpredictable ways.
