Ualalapi ─ Fragments from the End of Empire

Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa first published Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire in Portuguese in 1987. Named one of Africa's hundred best books of the twentieth century, it reflects on Mozambique's past and present through interconnected narratives related to the last ruler of the Gaza Empire, Ngungunhane. Defeated by the Portuguese in 1895, Ngungunhane was reclaimed for propaganda purposes by Mozambique's post-independence government as a national and nationalist hero. The regime celebrated his resistance to the colonial occupation of southern Mozambique as a precursor to the twentieth-century struggle for independence. In Ualalapi, Ungulani challenges that ideological celebration and portrays Ngungunhane as a despot, highlighting the violence and tyranny that were hallmarks of the Gaza Empire. This fresh look at the history of late nineteenth-century southeast Africa provides a prism through which to examine the machinations of those in power in Mozambique during the 1980s.

UNGULANI BA KA KHOSA (b. 1957) is Director of Mozambique's Instituto Nacional do Livro e do Disco. He is the author of several books, including Choriro and Entre as Memorias Silenciadas. RICHARD BARTLETT and ISAURA DE OLIVEIRA have translated a number of books from the Portuguese, including Lilia Momple's Neighbours: The Story of a Murder. PHILLIP ROTHWELL is King John II Professor of Portuguese at the University of Oxford and the author of A Canon of Empty Fathers: Paternity in Portuguese Narrative and A Postmodern Nationalist: Truth, Orality and Gender in the Work of Mia Couto.