Author · Angola
Pepetela
Pepetela, whose real name was Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos, was born in 1941 in Benguela. In 1958 he went to study in Lisbon, then reached France and later Algeria, where he studied sociology, and in 1963 he joined the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. A guerrilla fighter from 1969 to 1974, he took a nom de guerre that became his signature. Deputy Minister of Education after independence, until 1982, he then taught sociology at the university and in 1997 received the Camões Prize, the first awarded to an Angolan writer.