LOURENÇO MARQUES UNDER MEMORY AND THE EYE OF HERTZOG, BY JOÃO PAULO BORGES COELHO
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18817/rlj.v6i1.2734Abstract
Abstract: This article aims to analyze the city of Lourenço Marques, the colonial capital of Mozambique, through the eyes of João Paulo Borges Coelho, in his novel O Olho de Hertzog. From the perspective of a historiographical metafiction, the fractured view of the official history of the former portuguese colony in Africa is questioned. The book takes place in two different moments: General Von Lettow Vorbeck's military campaign in the so-called German East Africa, fleeing and fighting against English troops and the post-war period, in which the character Hans Mahrenholz/Henry Miller appears to Lourenço Marques in search of a diamond called Eye of Hertzog. In the middle of memory and history, Borges Coelho traces a plot that is very similar to a detective novel, mixing fictional and historical characters and demonstrating the impossibility of a single story. For that, we use the thought of Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Carlos Reis, Silvio Renato Jorge, Elena Brugioni among others.
Keywords: Mozambique; memory; history; metafiction; Lourenço Marques.
Abstract: This article aims to analyze the city of Lourenço Marques, the colonial capital of Mozambique, through the eyes of João Paulo Borges Coelho, in his novel O Olho de Hertzog. From the perspective of a historiographical metafiction, the fractured view of the official history of the former portuguese colony in Africa is questioned. The book takes place in two different moments: General Von Lettow Vorbeck's military campaign in the so-called German East Africa, fleeing and fighting against English troops and the post-war period, in which the character Hans Mahrenholz/Henry Miller appears to Lourenço Marques in search of a diamond called Eye of Hertzog. In the middle of memory and history, Borges Coelho traces a plot that is very similar to a detective novel, mixing fictional and historical characters and demonstrating the impossibility of a single story. For that, we use the thought of Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Carlos Reis, Silvio Renato Jorge, Elena Brugioni among others.
Keywords: Mozambique; memory; history; metafiction; Lourenço Marques.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Adriano Guedes Carneiro
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