Satire and lament: the short stories of João Melo

Abstract

In African literatures written in Portuguese, history and politics are, of course, two fundamental semantic structures. During colonialism, literature functioned as a liberation factor, in concomitance with attempts to elaborate the theoretical contours of nationality. In the decades of post-independence, artistic paths have been varied, and those who take history and politics as a means of questioning contemporaneity are particularly interesting.