'This is a very personal book, about being alone and lost'. In 1975 Kapuscinski's employers sent him to Angola to cover the civil war that had broken out after independence. For months he watched as Luanda and then the rest of the country collapsed into a civil war that was in the author's words 'sloppy, dogged and cruel'. In his account, Kapuscinski demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to describe and to explain the individual meaning of grand political abstractions.

Another Day of Life

Angola: Promises and Lies

Michael Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world's most prosperous countries – the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew – former prime minister and Singapore's "founding father" – designed to empower himself and his family. Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country's sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked companies – together with five critical features that form the key to understanding the nature of the networks. He provides an assessment of possible shifts of power within the elite in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, assuming power, and considers the possibility of a more fundamental democratic shift in Singapore's political system.

The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence

Whilst Pepetela's novel is set during the 1980s the novel begins 300 years earlier when a slave was beheaded for having relations with his master's daughter. This novel is a scathing critique of the Angolan ruling elite and their fall from socialist grace.

The Return of the Water Spirit

The co-host of ESPN’s Mike and Mike follows up his New York Times bestseller All You Could Ask For with this poignant story of one man's search to understand himself, his marriage, and his father

“Mike is as clever, astute, and perceptive as he is brilliant. . . . I can’t wait to see what he does next.”—Jane Green, author of Tempting Fate

Jonathan Sweetwater has been blessed with money, a fulfilling career, great kids and Claire, his smart, gorgeous, sophisticated wife. But there is one thing Jonathan never had: a relationship with his father.

Percival Sweetwater III has been absent from his son’s life since Jonathan was nine years old. A five-term U.S. senator, now dead, Percy was beloved by presidents, his constituents, and women alike, especially the five women who married him after Jonathan’s mother. 

Jonathan hasn’t thought about Percy or the hole he left in his life for years. Dedicated to Claire and his family, he’s nothing like his serial monogamist father. But then Jonathan discovers evidence that everything in his marriage may not be as perfect as he thought. Hurt and uncertain what to do, he knows that the only way to move forward is to go back.

On this quest for understanding—about himself, about manhood, about marriage—Jonathan decides to track down his father’s five ex-wives. His journey will take him from cosmopolitan cities to the mile-high mountains to a tropical island—and ultimately back to confront the one thing Jonathan has that his father never did: home.

My Father's Wives

On the eve of Angolan independence an agoraphobic woman named Ludo bricks herself into her 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 through the stories of those she sees from her window. As the country goes through various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.

"A General Theory of Oblivion" is a perfectly crafted, wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.

A General Theory of Oblivion

Based on three years of research in and extensive first-hand knowledge of Angola, Magnificent and Beggar Land is the definitive account of the fast-changing dynamics of this important yet misunderstood African state-a major exporter of oil, minerals and other raw materials and a growing power in the region. It documents the rise of a major African economy and its insertion in the international system. 
The government, backed by a strategic alliance with China and working hand in glove with hundreds of thousands of expatriates, many from the former colonial power, Portugal, has pursued an ambitious agenda of state-led national reconstruction. This has resulted in double-digit growth in Sub-Saharan Africa's third largest economy and a state budget in excess of total western aid to the entire continent. 
Scarred by a history of slave trading, colonial plunder and war, Angolans now aspire to the building of a decent society. Soares de Oliveira's book charts the remarkable course the country has taken in recent years.

Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola Since the Civil War

The narrator of this novel is a rather charming lizard. He lives on Felix Ventura's living-room wall, Felix, the lizard's friend and hero of the story, is a man who sells pasts - if you don't like yours, he can come up with an new one for you, a new past - full of better memories, with a complete lineage, photos and all."

The Book of Chameleons

Excerto
"Caminharam até à lagoa do Kinaxixi. Decisão de Nicolau. Para quê tão longe? Estava a atrasar o momento da execução? Thor não oferecia resistência à marcha, também não podia fazer nada, tão amarrado estava. Ia aos saltinhos, amparado pelos dois. Ambrósio sempre atrás. Chegaram à beira da lagoa. Nicolau não puxou pelo facão. Fez um gesto com a cabeça para Dimuka e se virou para trás. O carrasco oficial da família Van Dum fez ajoelhar Thor junto à lagoa. Pegou na catana que levava à cintura e desferiu o primeiro golpe."

A Gloriosa Família

It's first the story of two women in the 1980s, of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is "also" of two women-of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

In 1595, Nzingha is the strong, intelligent daughter of the Ngola (leader) of the Mbundu people of Ndongo (in modern-day Angola), loyal to her people and willing to fight for them. Unfortunately, because she is a girl, her brother is the favored child, in training to become the next Ngola, even though he is whiny, stupid, and slow (according to Nzingha). But Ajala, a respected seer, believes that Nzingha is destined to be the leader of Ndongo, and begins preparing her for this future. Nzingha's father fights to keep the Portuguese from taking over their homeland, yet it is Nzingha, ultimately, who acts as the go-between for her people and the Portuguese, negotiating acceptable relations in order to keep peace and power for the Mbundu.  Based on true historical events, places, people, and customs, this novel portrays the fascinating details of a remarkable young woman's strength and courage in defending her world against subterfuge, spies, and the onslaught of the Portuguese. Historical notes, photos, illustrations, maps, the Ngola family tree, and a glossary and pronunciation guide are included for a comprehensive understanding of a complex era. Patricia McKissack is the well-respected and award-winning author of over 100 children's books and historical novels, including the Newbery Honor book "The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural " and "Color Me Dark: The Diary of Nellie Lee Love" (from the Dear America series). (Ages 9 to 12) "--Emilie Coulter"

Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595

In the tradition of Joan Didion and Paul Theroux, this highly acclaimed writer/reporter offers a vivid portrait of today's Haiti--where during the day the streets are filled with bustling markets while at night they are filled with gunfire.

The Rainy Season

Considered to be António Lobo Antunes's masterpiece, "The Land at the End of the World"--now in a new and fully restored translation by acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa--recounts the anguished tale of a Portuguese medic haunted by memories of war, who, like the Ancient Mariner, will tell his tale to anyone who listens. In the tradition of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, Lobo Antunes weaves words into an exhilarating tapestry, imbuing his prose with the grace and resonance of poetry. The narrator, freshly returned to Lisbon after his hellish tour of duty in Angola, confesses the traumas of his memory to a nameless lover. Their evening unfolds like a fever dream, as Lobo Antunes leaps deftly back and forth from descriptions of postdictatorship Portugal to the bizarre and brutal world of life on the front line. The result is both tragic and absurd, and belongs among the great war novels of the modern age.

The Land at the End of the World

Pepetela's novel is a fascinating study of the tensions produced by racism, tribalism, and sexual morals.

Mayombe

Portugal's three wars in Africa in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea (Guine-Bissau today) lasted almost 13 years - longer than the United States Army fought in Vietnam. Yet they are among the most underreported conflicts of the modern era. Commonly referred to as Lisbon's Overseas War (Guerra do Ultramar) or in the former colonies, the War of Liberation (Guerra de Libertacao), these struggles played a seminal role in ending white rule in Southern Africa. Though hardly on the scale of hostilities being fought in South East Asia, the casualty count by the time a military coup d'etat took place in Lisbon in April 1974 was significant. It was certainly enough to cause Portugal to call a halt to violence and pull all its troops back to the Metropolis. Ultimately, Lisbon was to move out of Africa altogether, when hundreds of thousands of Portuguese nationals returned to Europe, the majority having left everything they owned behind. Independence for all the former colonies, including the Atlantic islands, followed soon afterwards. Lisbon ruled its African territories for more than five centuries, not always undisputed by its black and mestizo subjects, but effectively enough to create a lasting Lusitanian tradition. That imprint is indelible and remains engraved in language, social mores and cultural traditions that sometimes have more in common with Europe than with Africa. Today, most of the newspapers in Luanda, Maputo - formerly Lourenco Marques - and Bissau are in Portuguese, as is the language taught in their schools and used by their respective representatives in international bodies to which they all subscribe. Indeed, on a recent visit to Central Mozambique in 2013, a youthful member of the American Peace Corps told this author that despite having been embroiled in conflict with the Portuguese for many years in the 1960s and 1970s, he found the local people with whom he came into contact inordinately fond of their erstwhile 'colonial overlords'. As a foreign correspondent, Al Venter covered all three wars over more than a decade, spending lengthy periods in the territories while going on operations with the Portuguese army, marines and air force. In the process he wrote several books on these conflicts, including a report on the conflict in Portuguese Guinea for the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology. Portugal's Guerrilla Wars in Africa represents an amalgam of these efforts. At the same time, this book is not an official history, but rather a journalist's perspective of military events as viewed by somebody who has made a career of reporting on overseas wars, Africa's especially. Venter's camera was always at hand; most of the images used between these covers are his. His approach is both intrusive and personal and he would like to believe that he has managed to record for posterity a tiny but vital segment of African history."

Portugal's Guerrilla Wars in Africa: Lisbon's Three Wars in Angola, Mozambique and Portugese Guinea 1961-74

‘A rich and fascinating book about an overlooked African powerhouse by a travel writer of rare talent.’ TIM BUTCHER, author of "Blood River" and "Chasing the Devil"

Since the end of its crippling 27-year civil war over a decade ago, Angola has changed almost beyond recognition. An oil-fuelled bonanza has brought about massive foreign investment and a fabulously wealthy new elite, making its capital, Luanda, the second most expensive city in the world. Today, fortunes are being made and lost overnight, and rich Angolans are eagerly buying up the assets of its former coloniser, Portugal.

Fascinated by this complex nation perched at the forefront of a resurgent Africa, writer Daniel Metcalfe travelled to Angola to explore the country for himself. Ebullient and proud, and often unwilling to dwell on its past, Angola has a large army, a hunger for wealth and a need to prove itself on the continent. But as Metcalfe also discovers, it has some of the most grinding poverty in Africa as few Angolans have reaped the rewards of the peace.

Nonetheless, amid Angola's brash reality, Metcalfe finds there is a place for a traveller who isn't there to make a quick buck. Crossing the country as ordinary Angolans do, talking to tribal elders, oil workers, mine clearers and street children, he encounters a place of extremes, where cynicism and excess go hand-in-hand with great hospitality and ingenuity. Metcalfe also reveals a colourful history of pirates and slave traders, capuchin monks, syncretic Christian cults and elaborate spirit masks.

This is an Angola that symbolises nothing less than a broader turning point between the continents, the repositioning of the rich developed world versus Africa. It is a land that, until now, few outsiders have managed to unlock.

Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey Into Angola

New York Times bestselling author Meghan March goes back to New Orleans and the world of Lachlan Mount with a dangerous and bold new anti-hero.

The thing about ghosts is they’re supposed to stay dead. 

That’s exactly what I am, but I can’t stay away from Magnolia Marie Maison for one more day, let alone another year.

We’ve already got fifteen of those between us.

As it stands, she’ll want to kill me as soon as she lays eyes on me. And knowing her, she’s completely up to the task.

But I’m a man on a mission, and I’ve got everything riding on this.

So, here I come, Magnolia. This ghost is ready for whatever you got.

After all, there’s only one way I want this to end—’til death do us part.

Creole Kingpin (The Magnolia Duet, #1)

"A moça se despediu da amiga e avançou para a avenida. Ainda conservava nos lábios o sorriso da despedida, quando parou bruscamente, assustada com o automóvel preto. O carro também estacou de súbito. O condutor viu o sorriso desaparecer dos lábios dela. Mediu num relance o tamanho dos seios pontudos, querendo furar o vestido muito curto. Esperou gentilmente que se refizesse do susto e continuasse a travessia. Ela hesitou, mas depois agradeceu com um vago sorriso para os vidros escuros e correu à frente do carro, mostrando o corpo meio de menina meio de mulher, moldado pelo vestido justo. Uma gazela, uma cabra de rabo de leque, pensou o motorista, sentindo compulsivos apetites de caçador. Arrancou com o carro e seguiu até ao fundo da Ilha."

Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent: Story of Various Mysteries

These three stories are set in the slums of Angola's capital, Luanda, during the 1940s and 1950s. Originally published in Portuguese, this book won the Writers' Society's Grand Prize for Fiction in 1965.

Luuanda

As of 1975, the decades long insurgency in Angola appeared to be short of its conclusion. However, with no less than three major insurgent movements fighting for supremacy, the war went on and then South Africa, USA, the Soviet Union, Zaire and Cuba became involved.

Affairs like the CIA's efforts to destabilize Angola for little else but to recoup its prestige after the catastrophic defeat in South Vietnam, or the South African military intervention in Angola - Operation Savannah - have attracted lots of public attention and are relatively well covered in related publications. On the contrary, the final stages of the Portuguese withdrawal, the military buildup of three native insurgent forces, and then the onset of the Cuban military intervention in Angola - Operation Carlotta run in 1975 and 1976 - remain largely unknown.

Based on extensive research with help of Angolan and Cuban sources, the War of Intervention in Angola is providing a unique insight precisely into the latter topic. It traces the failures of the US-supported FNLA, the growth and reorganization of the MPLA into a conventional army; deployment of Cuban military contingents, their capabilities and intentions; and the performance and experiences of the MPLA and Cuban forces at war with South Africans and the third Angolan insurgent group - UNITA.

The volume is illustrated with over 100 rare photographs, a dozen of maps and 15 color profiles.

War of Intervention in Angola. Volume 1: Angolan and Cuban Forces at War, 1975-1976

Following the publication of Al Venter’s successful Portugal’s Guerrilla Wars in Africa - shortlisted by the New York Military Affairs Symposium’s 'Arthur Goodzeit Book Award for 2013' - his Battle for Angola delves still further into the troubled history of this former Portuguese African colony. This is a completely fresh work running to almost 600 pages including 32 pages of color photos, with the main thrust on events before and after the civil war that followed Lisbon’s over-hasty departure back to the metrópole. There are also several sections that detail the role of South African mercenaries in defeating the rebel leader Dr Jonas Savimbi (considered by some as the most accomplished guerrilla leader to emerge in Africa in the past century). There are many chapters that deal with Pretoria’s reaction to the deteriorating political and military situation in Angola, the role of the Soviets and mercenaries in the political transition, as well as the civil war that followed. With the assistance of several notable military authorities he elaborates in considerable detail on South Africa’s 23-year Border War, from the first guerrilla incursions to the last. In this regard he received solid help from the former the head of 4 Reconnaissance Regiment, Colonel Douw Steyn, who details several cross-border Recce strikes, including the sinking by frogmen of two Soviet ships and a Cuban freighter in an Angolan deepwater port. Throughout, the author was helped by a variety of notable authorities, including the French historian Dr René Pélissier and the American academic and former naval aviator Dr John (Jack) Cann. With their assistance, he covers several ancillary uprisings and invasions, including the Herero revolt of the early 20th century; the equally troubled Ovambo insurrection, as well as the invasion of Angola by the Imperial German Army in the First World War. Former deputy head of the South African Army Major General Roland de Vries played a seminal role. It was he - dubbed ‘South Africa’s Rommel’ by his fellow commanders - who successfully nurtured the concept of ‘mobile warfare’ where, in a succession of armored onslaughts ‘thin-skinned’ Ratel Infantry Fighting Vehicles tackled Soviet main battle tanks and thrashed them. There is a major section on South African Airborne – the ‘Parabats’ –by Brigadier-General McGill Alexander, one of the architects of that kind of warfare under Third World conditions. Finally, the role of Cuban Revolutionary Army receives the attention it deserves: officially there were almost 50,000 Cuban troops deployed in the Angolan war, though subsequent disclosures in Havana suggest that the final total was much higher.

Battle For Angola: The End of the Cold War in Africa c 1975-89

Though largely unknown in the Western world, the seventeenth-century African queen Njinga was one of the most multifaceted rulers in history, a woman who rivaled Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great in political cunning and military prowess. Linda Heywood offers the first full-length study in English of Queen Njinga's long life and political influence, revealing how this Cleopatra of central Africa skillfully navigated--and ultimately transcended--the ruthless, male-dominated power struggles of her time.

In 1626, after being deposed by the Portuguese, she transformed herself into a prolific slave trader and ferocious military leader, waging wars against the Portuguese colonizers and their African allies. Surviving multiple attempts to kill her, Njinga conquered the neighboring state of Matamba and ruled as queen of Ndongo-Matamba. At the height of her reign in the 1640s Njinga ruled almost one-quarter of modern-day northern Angola. Toward the end of her life, weary of war, she made peace with Portugal and converted to Christianity, though her devotion to the new faith was questioned.

Who was Queen Njinga? There is no simple answer. In a world where women were subjugated by men, she repeatedly outmaneuvered her male competitors and flouted gender norms, taking both male and female lovers. Today, Njinga is revered in Angola as a national heroine and honored in folk religions, and her complex legacy continues to resonate, forming a crucial part of the collective memory of the Afro-Atlantic world.

Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen

Ngunga ist dreizehn - kein Kind mehr, aber auch noch kein Mann. Er hat noch nie ene Schule gesehen, und oft knurrt ihm der Magen. Denn er lebt in Angola, einem land, das damals noch um seine Freiheit kämpfte. Ngungas Eltern sind tot, und sein Freund Nossa Luta muß an die Front. Bei wem soll der Junge nun wohnen? Der alte Kafuxi nimmt ihn auf, und Ngunga arbeitet auf seinen Feldern. Aber Kafuxi ist böse und geizig, er versteckt sein Essen vor den Guerillas. Ngunga beschämt ihn, dann geht er weg. Lange durchstreift der die Wälder. Manchmal findet er Früchte oder Honig, manchmal kommt er in ein Dorf. Doch Ngunga mag nicht bleiben. Er will herausfinden, ob die Menschen überall gleich sind und nur an sich denken.

As Aventuras de Ngunga

A fast-moving, action-packed account of Granger Korff's two years' service during 1980/81 with 1 Parachute Battalion at the height of the South African 'bush war' in South West Africa (Namibia) and Angola. Apart from the 'standard' counterinsurgency activities of Fireforce operations, ambushing and patrols, to contact and destroy SWAPO guerrillas, he was involved in several massive South African Defence Force (SADF) conventional cross-border operations, such as Protea, Daisy and Carnation, into Angola to take on FAPLA (Angolan MPLA troops) and their Cuban and Soviet allies. Having grown up as an East Rand rebel street-fighter, Korff's military 'career' is marred with controversy. He is always in trouble--going AWOL on the eve of battle in order to get to the front; facing a court martial for beating up, and reducing to tears, a sergeant-major in front of the troops; fist-fighting with Drug Squad agents; arrested at gunpoint after the grueling seven-week, 700km Recce selection endurance march--are but some of the colorful anecdotes that lace this account of service in the SADF.

19 with a Bullet: A South African Paratrooper in Angola

As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse during the late 1980s, and America prepared to claim its victory, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The result was the largest battle on the dark continent since Al Alamein, with forces from both sides paying in blood what U.S.-Soviet diplomats were otherwise spending in diplomacy.

The socialist government of Angola and its army, FAPLA, fully stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out a massive resistance group, UNITA, secretly supplied by the U.S, in order to claim full sovereignty over the country. A giant FAPLA offensive so threatened to succeed in overcoming UNITA that apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolan government to call on their own foreign reinforcements—the army of Communist Cuba’s.

Thus began the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, largely unknown in the U.S., but which raged for three months in the entirely odd match-up of South African Boers vs. Castro’s armed forces, which for the first time in the Cold War proved what it could achieve. And it turned out the Cubans were very good.

The South Africans were no slouches at warfare themselves, but had suffered under a boycott of weapons since 1977. The Cubans and Angolan troops, instead, had the latest Soviet weapons, easily delivered. But UNITA had its secret U.S. supply line and the South Africans knew how to fight, mainly at a disadvantage in air power for lack of spare parts. Meantime the Cubans overcame their logistic difficulties with an impressive airlift of troops over the Atlantic, while the Boers simply needed to drive next door.

As a case study of ferocious fighting between East and West—albeit proxies for the great powers on all sides—this book unveils a remarkable episode of the end-game of the Cold War largely unknown to the public. The Angolans on both sides suffered heavily, but it was the apartheid South Africans versus Castro’s armed forces that provides utter fascination in one of history’s rare match-ups.

The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War

As of mid-1976, the civil war in Angola was seemingly decided: supported by a large contingent of Cuban forces, the MPLA established itself in power in Luanda. Its native competitors, the US-French-Zaire-supported FNLA, and UNITA, supported by China and South Africa, were in tatters. The French and Zaire-supported FLEC - an armed movement for the independence of the oil-rich Cabinda enclave - was in disarray. The last few of their surviving units were either driven out of the country, or forced into hiding in isolated corners of northern and south-eastern Angola.

Nevertheless, the war went on. The MPLA's government failed to decisively defeat UNITA, in southern Angola, and then found itself facing a coup attempt from within in May 1977. Crushed in blood, this resulted in thousands being jailed and tortured: many more escaped abroad, where they reinforced the ranks of the battered opposition.

The coup prompted the Soviets to attempt increasing their influence with the aim of establishing permanent military bases in the country. While all such overtures were turned down, Angolan operations along the border to what was then the South-West Africa (subsequently Namibia) in October 1980, combined with the increased activity of SWAPO - an insurgency against the South African control of that territory - subsequently Namibia - prompted South Africa to launch another military intervention and resume supporting UNITA. In turn, this prompted not only the Cubans to further increase their military presence, but also the Soviet Union into delivering massive amounts of military aid to the government in Luanda. Angola not only assumed the role of one of the major hot battlefields in the Cold War: its 'civil war' saw a number of major showdowns between diverse belligerents, culminating in the Battle of Cangamba in 1983.

Based on extensive research, with help of Angolan and Cuban sources, the 'War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 2', traces the military build-up of the Cuban and Soviet-supported Angolan military, the FAPLA and its combat operations, and those of the Cuban military in Angola, in the period 1976-1983, their capabilities and intentions, and their battlefield performances.

The volume is illustrated with over 100 rare photographs, half a dozen maps and 18 colour profiles.

War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 2: Angolan and Cuban Forces, 1976-1983

BY THE WINNER OF THE 2013 JOSÉ SARAMAGO PRIZE
AN AFRICA39/UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE 2014 TOP AFRICAN WRITER UNDER 40
A "GUARDIAN" TOP FIVE AFRICAN WRITER, 2012
WINNER OF THE GRINZANE PRIZE FOR BEST YOUNG WRITER, 2010

By the beaches of Luanda, the Soviets are building a grand mausoleum in honour of the Comrade President. Granmas are whispering: houses, they say, will be "dexploded", and everyone will have to leave. With the help of his friends Charlita and Pi (whom everyone calls 3.14), and with assistance from Dr. Rafael KnockKnock, the Comrade Gas Jockey, the amorous Gudafterov, crazy Sea Foam, and a ghost, our young hero must decide exactly how much trouble he’s willing to face to keep his Granma safe in Bishop’s Beach.

Energetic and colourful, impish and playful, "Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret" is a charming coming-of-age story from the next rising star in African literature.


Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

In 1817, the first British envoy to meet the king of the Asante of West Africa was dazzled by his reception. A group of 5,000 Asante soldiers, many wearing immense caps topped with three foot eagle feathers and gold ram's horns, engulfed him with a "zeal bordering on phrensy, " shooting muskets into the air. The envoy was escorted, as no fewer than 100 bands played, to the Asante king's palace and greeted by a tremendous throng of 30,000 noblemen and soldiers, bedecked with so much gold that his party had to avert their eyes to avoid the blinding glare. Some Asante elders wore gold ornaments so massive they had to be supported by attendants. But a criminal being lead to his execution - hands tied, ears severed, knives thrust through his cheeks and shoulder blades - was also paraded before them as a warning of what would befall malefactors. This first encounter set the stage for one of the longest and fiercest wars in all the European conquest of Africa. 

At its height, the Asante empire, on the Gold Coast of Africa in present-day Ghana, comprised three million people and had its own highly sophisticated social, political, and military institutions. Armed with European firearms, the tenacious and disciplined Asante army inflicted heavy casualties on advancing British troops, in some cases defeating them. They won the respect and admiration of British commanders, and displayed a unique willingness to adapt their traditional military tactics to counter superior British technology. 

Even well after a British fort had been established in Kumase, the Asante capital, the indigenous culture stubbornly resisted Europeanization, as long as the "golden stool, " the sacred repository of royal power,remained in Asante hands. It was only after an entire century of fighting that resistance ultimately ceased.

The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War for Africa's Gold Coast

As a Marine, Major Stockwell was CIA paramilitary intelligence case officer in the Congo Crisis, Vietnam &amp; the Angolan War of Independence. Beginning a career in '64, he spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in '68, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in '70, before being transferred to oversee Vietnamese Tay Ninh province intelligence operations. He was awarded a CIA Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until Saigon's '75 fall. 

In December of 1976, Stockwell resigned from the CIA, opposed to the methods &amp; results of CIA paramilitary operations in the Third World &amp; testified before Congressional committees. Two years later, he wrote the exposé 'In Search of Enemies', about that experience &amp; its implications. He claimed the CIA was counterproductive to national security &amp; that its secret wars afforded no benefit. The CIA made the Angolan MPLA to be an enemy despite the fact the MPLA wanted relations with the USA &amp; hadn't committed aggressive acts. 

In 1978, on TV's '60 Minutes', he claimed CIA Director William Colby &amp; National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had systematically lied to Congress about CIA operations. Stockwell was one of the 1st professionals to leave the CIA to go public. The CIA retaliated by suing him in the 4th District Court in Washington DC. Part of the suit intended to eliminate the possibility of selling the story for the purpose of making a movie &amp; required future publications be submitted for CIA review. 

Unable to afford contesting the case, Stockwell filed for bankruptcy in Austin, TX. After the litigation was processed thru bankruptcy, the CIA dropped the suit. His book is useful for researchers &amp; journalists interested in uncovering information about the conduct of US foreign policy in Africa &amp; Asia. For example, the book tells of a CIA officer having Patrice Lumumba's body in his car trunk one night in then Elizabethville, Congo. Stockwell mentions in a footnote that at the time he didn't know the CIA was documented as having repeatedly tried to arrange Lumumba's assassination. His concerns were that, although many CIA colleagues had integrity, the organization harmed national security &amp; its secret wars harmed innocents.

In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story

This is a compelling and dramatic account of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses's fast-paced narrative takes the reader from Cuba's first steps to assist Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961, to the secret war between Havana and Washington in Zaire in 1964-65--where 100 Cubans led by Che Guevara clashed with 1,000 mercenaries controlled by the CIA--and, finally, to the dramatic dispatch of 30,000 Cubans to Angola in 1975-76, which stopped the South African advance on Luanda and doomed Henry Kissinger's major covert operation there. 

Based on unprecedented archival research and firsthand interviews in virtually all of the countries involved--Gleijeses was even able to gain extensive access to closed Cuban archives--this comprehensive and balanced work sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations. It revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional U.S. beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Union in directing Cuba's actions in Africa, and provides, for the first time ever, a look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War.

"Fascinating . . . and often downright entertaining. . . . Gleijeses recounts the Cuban story with considerable flair, taking good advantage of rich material.--"Washington Post Book World"

"Gleijeses's research . . . bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger. . . . After reviewing Dr. Gleijeses's work, several former senior United States diplomats who were involved in making policy toward Angola broadly endorsed its conclusions.--"New York Times"

"With the publication of "Conflicting Missions," Piero Gleijeses establishes his reputation as the most impressive historian of the Cold War in the Third World. 

Drawing on previously unavailable Cuban and African as well as American sources, he tells a story that's full of fresh and surprising information. And best of all, he does this with a remarkable sensitivity to the perspectives of the protagonists. This book will become an instant classic.--John Lewis Gaddis, author of "We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History"

Based on unprecedented research in Cuban, American, and European archives, this is the compelling story of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses sheds new light on U.S. foreign policy and CIA covert operations, revolutionizes our view of Cuba's international role, and provides the first look from the inside at Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War. 


Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976

Intonation in Context is for upper-intermediate and advanced learners of English who want to improve their intonation. It aims to make learners aware of the main features of intonation and provides enjoyable activities for both controlled and freer practice in a range of conversational situations. Intonation is presented as a system which has an important communicative function in any interaction between speaker and listener. Learners first explore the meaning conveyed by the parts of this system before going on to a variety of production exercises. The book is intended to be used alongside any general coursebook to provide a systematic and accessible introduction to this often neglected area of pronunciation. The easy-to-follow explanations assume no specialist knowledge of the subject and the accompanying CD provides clear models, making this an excellent choice for both classroom use and self-study.

Intonation in Context Student's Book: Intonation Practice for Upper-Intermediate and Advanced Learners of English

War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 3 covers the air warfare during the II Angolan War - fought 1975-1992 - through narrating the emergence and operational history of the Angolan Air Force and Air Defence Force (FAPA/DAA) as told by Angolan and Cuban sources.

Most accounts of this conflict - better known in the West as the 'Border War' or the 'Bush War', as named by its South African participants - tend to find the operations by the FAPA/DAA barely worth mentioning. A handful of published histories mention two of its MiG-21s claimed as shot down by Dassault Mirage F.1 interceptors of the South African Air Force (SAAF) in 1981 and 1982, and at least something about the activities of its MiG-23 interceptors during the battles of the 1987-1988 period.

On the contrary, the story told by Angolan and Cuban sources not only reveals an entirely different image of the air war over Angola of the 1980s: indeed, it reveals to what degree this conflict was dictated by the availability - or the lack of - air power and shows that precisely this issue dictated the way that the commanders of the Cuban contingents deployed to the country - whether as advisors or as combat troops - planned and conducted their operations.

It is thus little surprising that the first contingent of Cuban troops deployed to Angola during Operation Carlota, in late 1975, included a sizeable group of pilots and ground personnel who subsequently helped build-up the FAPA/DAA from virtually nothing. They continued that work over the following 14 years - sometimes in cooperation of Soviet advisors and others from East European countries - eventually establishing an air force that by 1988 maintained what South African military intelligence and the media subsequently described as the 'most advanced air defence system in Africa'. Not only the air defence system in question, but also the aircraft serving as its extended arms, ultimately managed a unique feat in contemporary military history: they enabled an air force equipped with Soviet-made aircraft and trained along the Soviet doctrine to establish at least a semblance of aerial superiority over an air force equipped with Western-made aircraft and operating under a Western doctrine.

Based on extensive research with help of Angolan and Cuban sources, the 'War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 3', traces the military build-up of the FAPA/DAA in the period 1975-1992, its capabilities and its intentions. Moreover, it provides a unique, blow-by-blow account of its combat operations and experiences.

The volume is illustrated with 100 rare photographs, half a dozen maps and 15 colour profiles, thus providing a unique source of reference on this topic.

War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 3: Angolan and Cuban Air Forces, 1975-1989

The dark years of European fascism left their indelible mark on Africa. As late as the 1970s, Angola was still ruled by white autocrats, whose dictatorship was eventually overthrown by black nationalists who had never experienced either the rule of law or participatory democracy. 

"Empire in Africa" takes the long view of history and asks whether the colonizing ventures of the Portuguese can bear comparison with those of the Mediterranean Ottomans or those experienced by Angola's neighbors in the Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa, or the Dutch colonies at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Transvaal. 

David Birmingham takes the reader through Angola's troubled past, which included endemic warfare for the first twenty-five years of independence, and examines the fact that in the absence of a viable neocolonial referee such as Britain or France, the warring parties turned to Cold War superpowers for a supply of guns. For a decade Angola replaced Vietnam as a field in which an international war by proxy was conducted. 

"Empire in Africa" explains how this African nation went from colony to independence, how in the 1990s the Cold War legacy turned to civil war, and how peace finally dawned in 2002.

Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors

O jornalista angolano Daniel Benchimol sonha com pessoas que não conhece. Moira Fernandes, artista plástica moçambicana, radicada em Cape Town, encena e fotografa os próprios sonhos. Hélio de Castro, neurocientista brasileiro, filma-os. Hossi Kaley, hoteleiro, antigo guerrilheiro, com um passado obscuro e violento, tem com os sonhos uma relação ainda mais estranha e misteriosa. Os sonhos juntam estas quatro personagens num país dominado por um regime totalitário à beira da completa desagregação. 

A Sociedade dos Sonhadores Involuntários é uma fábula política, satírica e divertida, que desafia e questiona a natureza da realidade, ao mesmo tempo que defende a reabilitação do sonho enquanto instrumento da consciência e da transformação.

The Society of Reluctant Dreamers

This history by celebrated Africanist David Birmingham begins in 1820 with the Portuguese attempt to create a third, African, empire after the virtual loss of Asia and America. In the nineteenth century the most valuable resource extracted from Angola was agricultural labor, first as privately owned slaves and later as conscript workers. The colony was managed by a few marine officers, by several hundred white political convicts, and by a couple of thousand black Angolans who had adopted Portuguese language and culture. The hub was the harbor city of Luanda which grew in the twentieth century to be a dynamic metropolis of several million people. The export of labor was gradually replaced when an agrarian revolution enabled white Portuguese immigrants to drive black Angolan laborers to produce sugar cane, cotton, maize and above all coffee.
During the twentieth century Congo copper supplemented this wealth, by gem-quality diamonds, and by offshore oil. Although much of the countryside retained its dollar-a-day peasant economy, new wealth generated conflict which pitted white against black, north against south, coast against highland, American allies against Russian allies. The generation of warfare finally ended in 2002 when national reconstruction could begin on Portuguese colonial foundations.


A Short History of Modern Angola

Ondjaki, o escritor angolano já bem conhecido do público por obras como o assobiador (2002), quantas madrugadas tem a noite (2004), os da minha rua (2007), AvóDezanove e o segredo do soviético (2008), entre outros títulos, sempre colocou Angola, e em particular Luanda, de onde é natural, no centro da sua escrita.

Com o presente romance, de novo aparece Luanda - a Luanda atual do pós-guerra, das especificidades do seu regime democrático, do «progresso», dos grandes negócios, do «desenrasca» - como pano de fundo de uma história que é um prodígio da imaginação e um retrato social de uma riqueza surpreendente.

Combinando com rara mestria os registos lírico, humorístico e sarcástico, os transparentes dá vida a uma vasta galeria de personagens onde encontramos todos os grupos sociais, intercalando magníficos diálogos com sugestivas descrições da cidade degradada e moderna.

Os Transparentes

In the seventh bestselling Ben Hope conspiracy thriller, the action shoots back in time to the days of Jesus Christ – and a buried secret that has staggering implications for the world as we know it…

Returning to the UK to try to sort out his stormy personal life, Ben runs into two old friends. Simeon and Michaela were once his fellow students at Oxford – now they are The Reverend and Mrs Arundel.

Ben senses that Simeon is deeply troubled and frightened, but before the truth can emerge about his secretive research project concerning a mysterious, ancient ‘sacred sword’, both he and Michaela are wiped out in a devastating road crash. Convinced that his friends’ deaths were no accident, Ben is propelled on a global quest from the UK to France, the Holy Land and America to unlock the enigma of the sacred sword. At every step, he is pursued by ruthless agents of the sinister organisation that will stop at nothing to acquire it.

In the course of his investigations, Ben will discover an incredible secret, not just about the history of Christianity but about his own past . . .

Angola

Another Day of Life

Ryszard Kapuściński

Angola: Promises and Lies

Karl Maier

The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence

Michael D. Barr

The Return of the Water Spirit

Pepetela

My Father's Wives

Mike Greenberg

A General Theory of Oblivion

José Eduardo Agualusa

Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola Since the Civil War

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira

The Book of Chameleons

José Eduardo Agualusa

A Gloriosa Família

Pepetela

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fannie Flagg

Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595

Patricia C. McKissack

The Rainy Season

Amy Wilentz

The Land at the End of the World

António Lobo Antunes

Mayombe

Pepetela

Portugal's Guerrilla Wars in Africa: Lisbon's Three Wars in Angola, Mozambique and Portugese Guinea 1961-74

Al J. Venter

Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey Into Angola

Daniel Metcalfe

Creole Kingpin (The Magnolia Duet, #1)

Meghan March

Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent: Story of Various Mysteries

Pepetela

Luuanda

José Luandino Vieira

War of Intervention in Angola. Volume 1: Angolan and Cuban Forces at War, 1975-1976

Adrien Fontanellaz

Battle For Angola: The End of the Cold War in Africa c 1975-89

Al J. Venter

Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen

Linda M. Heywood

As Aventuras de Ngunga

Pepetela

19 with a Bullet: A South African Paratrooper in Angola

Granger Korff

The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War

Peter Polack

War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 2: Angolan and Cuban Forces, 1976-1983

Adrien Fontanellaz

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

Ondjaki

The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War for Africa's Gold Coast

Robert B. Edgerton

In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story

John R. Stockwell

Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976

Piero Gleijeses

Intonation in Context Student's Book: Intonation Practice for Upper-Intermediate and Advanced Learners of English

Barbara Bradford

War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 3: Angolan and Cuban Air Forces, 1975-1989

Adrien Fontanellaz

Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors

David Birmingham

The Society of Reluctant Dreamers

José Eduardo Agualusa

A Short History of Modern Angola

David Birmingham

Os Transparentes

Ondjaki

The Sacred Sword (Ben Hope, #7)

Scott Mariani