1999
255 pp.
3 maps, 13 b/w photos, 2 tables, glossary, author and subject index
Text language: English
This collection contains narratives told by Angolan immigrants to Namibia about the Portuguese conquest of Angola. The arrival of the Portuguese is a subject which has been treated in different ways in oral literature among people from south-east Angola. This variety results from the individual creativity of each narrator, and reveals how different sets of oral traditions become embedded in local culture. The nine narrative clusters in the book reveal different local concepts; for example, the nature of colonialism and internal politics, tradition and modernity, and magic and religion.
The editors, formerly members of the Collaborative Research Centre 389 Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa (1995–2007), University of Cologne/Germany, have combined their linguistic and historical insights to link language in context, strategies of story-telling and the relationships between oral tradition and the past.
Under these links you will find publications by the authors and further ethnographical, ethnohistorical and africanistic studies of southern and central Africa:
