As Mulheres do Meu Pai: From Luanda to the Island of Mozambique, a road novel on board candongueiro

Abstract

The universality of the ideal of freedom offered by road take authors of different countries and cultures to adopt the road novel as a medium of expression, independently of their historical indissociability to the United States of America. In this regard, the aim of this work is to verify if the characteristics of As Mulheres do Meu Pai (2007), by José Eduardo Agualusa, allow it to be classified as a road novel in the context of African literature. It was concluded that the work fulfils the majority of this literary subgenre basis requirements, specially the inevitable link between the physical and spiritual trips, the confluence of several narrative genres, the space cartography such as the reflection of the characters’ contemplative attitude and the use of motorized transport. The predominance of masculine is not going to come about -another condition required in the literary subgenre road novel-, because of in As Mulheres do Meu Pai the single feminine traveller claims the limelight to herself, establishing as the main figure of the work.