Novel
Terra Morta
Not translated into English
Castro Soromenho · 1949
Synopsis
Camaxilo, in the Angolan Lunda, was in the rubber era the largest trading post in the region, then the scene of the revolt of the chief Caungula and its bloody repression. The post is now no more than a dying town: a few traders and officials remain, whose main task is to recruit Black labour for the forced labour of the diamond mines and the administration. The official Joaquim Américo and those around him, Black, mixed-race and White, are all caught in the same system.
Context
The novel appeared in 1949 in Rio de Janeiro, the first title in the Gaivota series of the Casa do Estudante do Brasil. An attempt to publish it in Portugal, in 1961, was immediately banned, and the Portuguese public did not have full access to it until after the revolution of 1974. It opens the Camaxilo trilogy, continued by two novels of 1957 and 1970. The French translation by Violante do Canto, with a preface by Roger Bastide, appeared in 1956 from Présence Africaine under the name of the place.
Who it is for
A novel in Portuguese, translated into French. It describes forced labour in the Portuguese colonies without assuming any prior knowledge of it.
Prizes and reception
As early as 1949, Adolfo Casais Monteiro saw in it the means to renew Portuguese neorealism, and Roger Bastide a landmark in the history of that movement.