Angola Is Wherever I Plant My Field
Wit, absurdity, and postcolonial truth collide in a satirical collection that spans continents and identities. A nation forged in fire. A people scattered by war. Stories that refuse to be silenced. This Luanda novel of African contemporary fiction and postcolonial African fiction traces the human cost of Angola’s civil war with political satire, intimacy, and hope. Across Luanda’s streets and forgotten camps, lives collide. A young MPLA guerrilla in North Korea punctures revolutionary dogma with one impossible question. A street kid, haunted by his mother’s murder, threads hunger and danger on the city’s margins. A wife hides her deafness for twentyfive years. A displaced farmer plants cassava in abandoned ground and harvests a future from dust. Through interconnected tales spanning decades, Angola Is Wherever I Plant My Field captures the resilience, absurdity, and fierce humanity of Angolan literature and Lusophone African literature. What you’ll find inside *Literary fiction that blends political satire with raw, psychological portraits of postcolonial life *Themes of refugee survival, identity, and belonging amid war’s long aftermath *Stories that move between dark humor and searing emotion—colonial afterlives, the chaos of independence, corruption, improvisation, and the stubborn work of rebuilding home "Perfect for readers who enjoy *No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe *Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy *Of Mice and Men and East of Eden by John Steinbeck *A Map Is Only One Story (immigration and displacement) *Refugee by Alan Gratz; The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley If you browse current ny times fiction best sellers, oprah book club list 2025, reese witherspoon book club picks 2025, pulitzer prize winning books, or black authors best sellers 2025 to discover your next read, add this Angola civil war novel to your shortlist.
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Melo’s prose reveals to us a master of postmodern techniques of pastiche, interrupted narration, multiple or open endings and the explicit intervention of the narrator (and sometimes even the author) within the narrative plot.
Melo’s stories bring to mind the work of Borges and Ishiguro and some ineffable otherness that is his alone. Discovering his work could be the highlight of a literary career.
Angola is Wherever I Plant My Field is an intelligent, sometimes belligerent, collection of absurdist stories that address issues like colonialism, poverty, and race relations in Angola. Darkly funny, this collection of stories is a highly literary (perhaps even meta-literary) book not to be missed.
Melo's compelling prose is very attractive and spectacular, the open endings will leave you with mouth open and shivers all over your skin, an admirably innovative collection of short stories that I highly recommend you to read, João is hands down my newest favourite Writer, if you are a fan of Franz Kafka, Kazuo Ishiguro or Borges then I truly recommend you to grab a copy of ANGOLA IS WHEREVER I PLANT MY FIELD!!!
ANGOLA IS WHEREVER I PLANT MY FIELD is a book that balances lightness, humor and postcolonial realities with moments of darkness and postmodernism, this is delightfully odd and beautifully written. This book hooked me from the very first page, Melo's prose is original, clever and stunningly captivating.
For those of you who teach literature or modern African history, teach this! If you don’t, read it anyway. You’ll think, you might chuckle, and you will definitely learn something. Parabéns, João
The stories that drew me in were short and snappy, using humour, absurdity, exaggeration, wit, satirical leanings, and the existence of the truth mixed in to depict the complexity of Angolan society, history, and their present…these observations and conversations by our omniscient narrator reflects a knowledge that come from experience, from one who knows and understands the imprint of colonialism, the fight for independence, the political and ideological segregation, and the civil war that still resonates within the very fabric of the nation. Melo's collection has some gems that used satire, wit, and a dark, dry humour that really made the issues they tackled less traumatic.
I was taken by the title of this book, "Angola is Wherever I Plant My Field," and it kind of reminded me of the feeling of staying true to your roots… there are eighteen (18) stories to take you on a trip full of laughter, moments of reflection and most of all, keep you entertained…The writing style is something that also caught my attention, it reminded me of the kind of stories you could be told whilst in the company of a long lost friend, there's accounts of experiences here and there-some you laugh at, others you sigh, others you just nod and look away afraid that whatever you say would not do it justice. All in all, it was a pleasure reading this book.