THE REINTERPRETATION OF THE CONQUEST OF BENGUELA IN THE NOVEL A SUL. O SOMBREIRO, BY PEPETELA

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the novel A Sul. O Sombreiro, by the Angolan writer Pepetela, first published in 2011. The book engages with History by contrasting literary writing with colonial narratives and reinterpreting the official narrative of the Conquest of Benguela. Based on Margarida Calafate Ribeiro's concept, the article seeks to understand the narrative strategies used by the author to challenge the idea of the empire as the imagination of the center. The demonstration that what was called an empire was not such an extensive territory, the revelation that the Conquest was carried out by exiled criminals, the construction of two protagonists—Portuguese conqueror Manuel Cerveira Pereira, founder of Benguela, and the fictional character Carlos Rocha, an Angolan Black man—and the use of different narrative voices show a shift away from colonial narratives that positioned only the Portuguese at the center of the scene. In this way, the colonial narrative ideology that places the Portuguese Empire at the center is reinterpreted.