Angolan journalist and author Jose Eduardo Agualusa has won this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his book ‘The book of Chameleons’. He shares the prize money of £10,000 prize money with translator Daniel Hahn.
Jose writes in Portuguese and is basically a native of Angola. His previous works include novels, some short stories, a novella. He has also won the Grande Premio Literario RTP for his novel Nacao Crioula.
The prize is given to novels in other languages, translated into English and published in the UK. Boyd Tonkin, the judge who is also the literary editor of the Independent, described it as “a delightful, moving and revealing novel about modern Africa. It is remarkable for its witty originality and profound humanity, and blessed by a captivating translation from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn.’
The prize was founded in 1990, lapsed in 1995and was restored in 2001, with help from the Arts Council. Authors like Milan Kundera and WG Sebald are included in the list of its previous receivers. Last year, the novel ‘Out Stealing Horses’ by Per Petterson was the winner.
Source:BBC
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