ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three narratives of Pepetela, one utopian, one an ambivalent vision of utopian collectivity, and the last dystopian. Angolan fiction has always been an important space for what literary critic Homi Bhabha has termed the "narration of nation." Muana Puo, published in 1978, was written in the late 1960s while Pepetela was studying in Algeria. Muana Puo, shares didactic tendencies with some of Pepetela's other narratives and the fiction of other contemporary Angolan writers. Pepetela's 1989 novel Lueji textualizes collectivity through the parallel narrations of historical and contemporary resistance. The historical narration of the Lunda empire has been displaced by dominant European historiographies intent on silencing resistance. The Angolan estoria is the narrative form that has been most associated with emergent Angolan national literature. It was first cultivated by fiction writer Joso Luandino Vieira as a new narrative form that combines traditional practices of oral storytelling with acculturated narrative discourse.
