A General Theory of Oblivion [Paperback]

Winner of the 2017 Dublin International Literary Award

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016

Who is this solitary young woman on the top floor of a luxury building in Luanda, Angola’s capital, and why has she walled off her apartment? Her name is Ludo…Her brooding presence is inescapable”  — Kirkus Reviews

On the eve of Angolan independence, an agoraphobic woman named Ludo bricks herself into her Luandan apartment for 30 years, living off vegetables and the pigeons she lures in with diamonds, burning her furniture and books to stay alive and writing her story on the apartment’s walls.
Almost as if we’re eavesdropping, the history of Angola unfolds in A General Theory of Oblivion through the stories of those Ludo sees from her window in a a wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize
Winner of the Dublin International Literary Award
Shortlisted for the Three Percent Best Translated Book Award
Winner of the 2019 Angolan National Prize for Culture and Arts

Like Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa and Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, Portuguese-Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa is a literary trickster who dazzles with his artificial fictional creations... Agualusa is a master of varied genre structure, and he has great fun shifting from spy novel to pastoral narrative to interior reflection, but his heart is deeply invested in his characters, and each individual's story burns itself into the readerlc—