The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa is a tale that intertwines reality with fiction, and the past with the present. The title of the novel is quite deceiving, as it barely mentions chameleons, but the closest we get is a gecko narrator living in Angola. The novel is a profound exploration of memory, […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with Dreams, friendship, gecko, The Book of Chameleons, war
Hi everyone! This week I read “The Book of Chameleons” by José Eduardo Agualusa. I am going to be very honest and say that I did not enjoy this book, mainly because I found it difficult to follow and mildly uninteresting. However, this book discusses important themes of identity, truth and historical impact. It also […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with Colonialism, family, history, life, memory, The Book of Chameleons, war
José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons
Posted in Agualusa lecture, Lecture Videos | Tagged with Angola, animals, betrayal, Borges, C21st, doubles, history, illusion, memory, repetition, violence, war
The Trenchcoat by Norman Manea was a book which had importance and meaning, hidden by the disguise of normalcy. At first read, the book depicts the drama and relationships of many characters, and displays their conversations over dinner parties, and in the privacy of their homes. It is only in the small details where one […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with censorship, class, communism, history, life, politics, revolution, Symbolism, war
This week’s reading was The Trench Coat. The book takes place in Romania under the communist regime and to be frank, I did not enjoy reading it. I was on the treadmill while reading the beginning section and what I captured was the copious amounts of drinking such as whisky and vodka, which coincidentally, is […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with communism, politics, war
I am just going to go ahead and preemptively apologize because I know you are probably tired of reading this when it comes to blogs about The Trenchcoat by Norman Manea, but I’m confused. I wish I wasn’t, but I am; along with a little dissatisfied. This book had me almost as scrambled as the […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with blog, life, paranoia, politics, war
After reading this novel, I’m now thinking about the subject of names. When the girl (who, as far as I can tell, was never named) talks about her lover and her family, they are not named (unless I missed the mentions of their names) – except when she names her younger brother, “our little Paulo” […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with age, desire, family, Marguerite Duras, memory, names, The Lover, war