A General Theory of Oblivion

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.

José Eduardo Agualusa, a writer and journalist, is one of the leading literary voices in Angola and the Portuguese language today. His books have been translated into 25 languages. Four of his books have been translated into English: Creole (2002), winner of the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature; The Book of Chameleons (2006), which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; My father's wives (2008), and Rainy Season (2009). He has received literary grants from the Centro Nacional da Cultura, the Fundação do Oriente, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst. Agualusa has also written four plays: W generation, O monólogo, Chovem amores na Rua do Matador and A Caixa Preta, the last two written with Mia Couto. 
Daniel Hahn is the author of a number of works of non-fiction. His translation of The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. He has translated the work of José Luís Peixoto, Philippe Claudel, María Dueñas, José Saramago, Eduardo Halfon, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Corsino Fortes, and others.