The Utopian Generation

A seminal novel of African decolonization available for the first time in English translation.

Lisbon 1961. Aware that the secret police are watching them, four young Angolans discuss their plans for a utopian homeland free from Portuguese rule. When war breaks out, they flee to France & must decide whether they will return home to join the fight. Two remain in exile & two return to Angola to become guerilla fighters, barely escaping capture over the course of the brutal fourteen-year war. Reunited in the capital of Luanda, the old friends face independence with their confidence shaken and struggle to build a new society free of the corruption & violence of colonial rule.

Pepetela, a former revolutionary guerilla fighter & Angolan government minister, is the author of more than 20 novels that have won prizes in Africa, Europe, & South America. The Utopian Generation is widely considered in the Portuguese-speaking world an essential novel of African decolonization—and is now available in English translation for the first time.

°°°

“This decades-spanning anti-colonialist novel from the early sixties by Angola’s most prominent writer (real name: Artur Pestana dos Santos) involves a group of students in Lisbon who, faced with the prospect of being conscripted to suppress a political uprising in their native land, end up (like Pepetela himself did) as guerilla fighters in Angola’s brutal 14-year war.” — Globe & Mail

“A classic post-colonial text . . . This sweeping novel, which moves in roughly ten-year increments from 1961 to 1991, tells the steadily absorbing story of ‘how a generation embarks on a glorious struggle for independence & then destroys itself.'” — Literary Review of Canada

“Remarkable on several counts . . . The Utopian Generation provides a unique vision of the recent turbulent history of Angolan society as seen by a disillusioned revolutionary.” — World Literature Today