A General Theory of Oblivion by Jose Eduardo Agualusa: book review

A General Theory of Oblivion (2012) is set in Luanda, Angola, beginning on the eve of independence in 1974 (after a 13-year conflict), and concluding nearly 30 years later.

Born in the Portuguese city of Aveiro in 1925, Ludovica Fernandes Mano, and her sister Odete, move to Angola when Odete marries Orlando. When Odete and Orlando flee in the last year of the war, Ludo bricks herself into their apartment on the 11th and top floor of their prestigous building.

Ludo has had a fear of open spaces and a primordial dread of the sunlit sky since her childhood, even refusing to go to school without the protection of a large black umbrella, whatever the weather. Now, even on the terrace of her own apartment, she covers herself with a cardboard box.

With food, a terrace garden, a few diamonds, a multitude of books, and her albino dog Phantom, Ludo remains secluded for 28 years. Her view of the outside world is through the window, the radio, and a note on a pigeon’s foot. Under an African sky, she longs for the cover of darkness.

Despite near starvation, Ludo prefers her own company, and that of books, until one day a seven-year-old boy climbs onto her terrace. Sabalu Estavao Capitango claims Ludo as his grandmother, until he realises that he is trapped, unable to come and go as he used to.

This is an amazing story, based on the true life of Ludovica Fernandes Mano who died in 2010, although this novel is wholly fictional. It is about fear and paranoia, abandonment and isolation, death and survival, mistrust and resignation, independence and dependence, as well as complete and utter detachment.

Crisply delivered, with poignancy and pathos, each sentence strikes at the emotional heart of what it means to be detached from the life of a bustling city of poverty and despair carving out its own independent but unknown future. This is a remarkably unique novel.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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