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[MkB]

I've just stumbled upon the mention of a couple of Angolan novels about a Luanda secret police detective and anti-hero named "Jaime Bunda" (= equivalent of James Bond in Portuguese, the language of Angola). They were written since 2001 by "Pepetela", an Angolan author with an interesting political history, as satyrical pieces poking fun at je James Bond figure while developping his views of the Angolan nation, history and the issues of globalization.

I found here a short summary:

[Pepetela] has chosen the fat, unlucky trainee at Luanda’s secret police, Jaime Bunda, agente secreto (“Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent”), as the protagonist of a crime story set in Luanda, where it is easier to find a Kalashnikov than an honest official. Jaime Bunda becomes a credible guide on an anything but touristy trail through the city of Luanda. He appears again in the following novel, Jaime Bunda e a morte do americano (“Jaime Bunda and the Death of the American”). Now he has to clear up the murder of an American engineer. Pepetela pokes fun at the Americans for their seemingly pathological anxiety of terror attacks as well as mocking the antiamericanism of the Angolans. The tensions within this country, which lives in constant political insecurity since its independence, are continuously present in Pepetela’s work.

You'll find online a comprehensive article about those novels in a scholarly article by Stephen Henighan, 'Um James Bond subdesenvolvido': the ideological work of the Angolan detective in Pepetela's Jaime Bunda novels, published in Portuguese Studies, 2006

There are 2 Jaime Bunda novels:

• Jaime Bunda, agente secreto (“Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent”)
  Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2001, 312 p. ● Brazil: Record 2003 ● Denmark: Hjulet 2002 ● France: Buchet Chastel 2005 ● Italy: Edizioni E/O 2006 ● Sweden: Tranan ● Switzerland: Unionsverlag 2004, pb 2006 (German) ● UK: Aflame 2006
• Jaime Bunda e a morte do americano (“Jaime Bunda and the Death of the American”)
  Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2003, 277 p. ● France: Buchet Chastel

For those who are curious but (like me) can't read Portuguese fluently, at least one of those novels (the first) has been translated and is available in paperback:
- into English,
http://www.amazon.co...a/dp/0955233917
- into German:
http://www.amazon.co...g...6438&sr=1-7

I haven't read any of those novels, but I am intrigued... Plus I know next to nothing about Angolan society, so I think I may give Jaime Bunda a read to get a first approach

Do some of you know about those novels? And if so, what do you think of them?