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A review by nini23
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by José Eduardo Agualusa
2.0
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers, is about people who dream and are dreamed of, in unusual ways in Angola, South Africa, Cuba and Brazil. Translated from Portuguese, I found the phrases and imagery chosen to be rather cliche at times e.g. Her image continued to float, a sailboat among the tall waves, on the stormy sea that my life had become. This is José Eduardo Agualasa's seventeenth novel, I read an old interview of his where he states that English Anglo readers have little access and exposure to works in Portuguese and French. Hopefully with the increasing popularity of translated works, this has changed.
Embedded in this is the political history of Angola, colonialism under Portuguese rule, specific events like the Cuban military intervention in 1975, revolutionary resistance. Mr Agualusa does not spoonfeed the reader with relevant background information, which I like; it was up to me to read up on Sevimba and UNITA and untangle statements like "No comrade, you on one side, the puppets of imperialism, supported by South African racists; and the socialist comrades on the other, along with the proletariatan internationalists."
Some of the story is in epistolary form; both our narrator Daniel Benchimol and Rainbow hotel owner Hossi Apolónio Kaley in Cabo Ledo, Angola keep journals and the journal entries are how we readers follow happenings. Of the dreamers, I was most interested in Hossi Kaley's story. He was a UNITA Secret Services agent but defected after the killing of his family. Struck by lightning, he lost parts of his memory but started appearing in the dreams of others in his vicinity wearing a purple coat. When sent to Cuba to recuperate, the Cuban intelligentsia tried to coerce him into using his unique ability for their purposes - communicating messages via dreams. Daniel Benchimol dreams of people and events that eventually occur, such as the lady artist Moira Fernandez whose photos are in the camera he found. Moira Fernandez lives in Cape Town, South Africa and exhibits staged photos of her dreams. It's hinted she's an 'alpha' dreamer who can broadcast her dreams and she jokes about setting up a "republic of dreamers." A neuroscientist enlists her help in sleep studies to render into images the dreams of study participants. The last 'dreamer' Karinguiri I found the least interesting, the teen daughter of Daniel, full of idealistic dreams, gets thrown in prison for throwing bloody Monopoly money on the Angolan president.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this novel suffered from the male gaze. It seemed overly fixated on breasts ("I'd marry a dark skinned woman with small breasts and wide hips....", "Dona Filó had her enormous breasts leaning against the steering wheel", "She had breasts in full bloom, full and hard, ...", "The dark stage, the naked woman, with her shriveled breasts hanging down over her belly.") At least two instances of blatant fat-shaming ("...unpleasant, enormously fat woman,...", "One of the police officers, an obese young woman, who barely fit into her uniform, ...."). The females Ava and Moira in the plot seem to exist to serve the sexual and emotional needs of the male protagonists while the menfolk are doing their heroic resistance and mystery solving; none of the women exhibit any depth or dimension. Moira, the artist, for example likes to wander around naked in her photos. Why? What's her motivation? Daniel Benchimol dreams of having sex with her and even superimposes her face on a pair of Jamaican contortionist twins to have sex with in his dreams. He's also an absentee father who has no clue who his daughter's friends are and has time to fly to chase skirt while daughter is locked up in prison.
Speaking of said daughter, contrary to the author's intention of making her and her group inspiring and sympathetic, I found them young, foolish and playing at being revolutionaries. It started to read like a YA fantasy where a group of seven young greenhorn idealists manage to accomplish with their amateur tactics what experienced hardened guerrillas have not managed for decades despite massive loss of lives to their cause. I don't buy the sequence of events that led to the President's resignation and downfall; if he could be cowed by international pressure and the people's wishes, the country wouldn't be where it was for decades. As well, the quick wrapping up of 'All's well ends well" belies the shallow treatment of the issues at hand. I was reading a current non-fiction article on Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring. The dictator is no longer in power but unemployment, inflation and poverty rates are higher than ever. It was obvious too that the author favoured Karinguiri, I never had any trepidation that she was in any real danger from the authorities with plot armor to protect her. Heck these 'kind' authorities even offer her a scholarship to study in Lisbon. **mild spoilers ahead*** Sure enough, she continues her charmed life at a beach idyllic locale after that brief foray into activist protest adventuring.
The section on identity was interesting with a character asserting " You can change your passport. You can't change your identity." Daniel Benchimol is conspicuously referred to as "my Angolan friend" by his love rival as a put-down. A discussion of some of our greatest writers follows which I loved: is Clarice Lispector Ukrainian (left Ukraine as an infant) or Brazilian, does Nabokov write from a Russian perspective even when he writes in English, is Coetzee South African or Australian. I think the relevant dissection is which mantle of cultural/racial/nationalist identity with which authors wield their almighty pens and voices, invariably permeating into their works. Which brings it back full circle when Mr Agualasa is hailed as an Angolan author yet his parents are "white Portuguese settlers" (his own words). He is writing about the brutal years of Portuguese colonialism, the independence civil war in Angola between different paramilitary groups backed by foreign intervention and the lingering aftermath of colonialism.
https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/angola-war-of-independence-post-war-consolidation/
https://www.theroot.com/a-white-journalist-discovers-the-lie-of-portugal-s-colo-1790854283
Embedded in this is the political history of Angola, colonialism under Portuguese rule, specific events like the Cuban military intervention in 1975, revolutionary resistance. Mr Agualusa does not spoonfeed the reader with relevant background information, which I like; it was up to me to read up on Sevimba and UNITA and untangle statements like "No comrade, you on one side, the puppets of imperialism, supported by South African racists; and the socialist comrades on the other, along with the proletariatan internationalists."
Some of the story is in epistolary form; both our narrator Daniel Benchimol and Rainbow hotel owner Hossi Apolónio Kaley in Cabo Ledo, Angola keep journals and the journal entries are how we readers follow happenings. Of the dreamers, I was most interested in Hossi Kaley's story. He was a UNITA Secret Services agent but defected after the killing of his family. Struck by lightning, he lost parts of his memory but started appearing in the dreams of others in his vicinity wearing a purple coat. When sent to Cuba to recuperate, the Cuban intelligentsia tried to coerce him into using his unique ability for their purposes - communicating messages via dreams. Daniel Benchimol dreams of people and events that eventually occur, such as the lady artist Moira Fernandez whose photos are in the camera he found. Moira Fernandez lives in Cape Town, South Africa and exhibits staged photos of her dreams. It's hinted she's an 'alpha' dreamer who can broadcast her dreams and she jokes about setting up a "republic of dreamers." A neuroscientist enlists her help in sleep studies to render into images the dreams of study participants. The last 'dreamer' Karinguiri I found the least interesting, the teen daughter of Daniel, full of idealistic dreams, gets thrown in prison for throwing bloody Monopoly money on the Angolan president.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this novel suffered from the male gaze. It seemed overly fixated on breasts ("I'd marry a dark skinned woman with small breasts and wide hips....", "Dona Filó had her enormous breasts leaning against the steering wheel", "She had breasts in full bloom, full and hard, ...", "The dark stage, the naked woman, with her shriveled breasts hanging down over her belly.") At least two instances of blatant fat-shaming ("...unpleasant, enormously fat woman,...", "One of the police officers, an obese young woman, who barely fit into her uniform, ...."). The females Ava and Moira in the plot seem to exist to serve the sexual and emotional needs of the male protagonists while the menfolk are doing their heroic resistance and mystery solving; none of the women exhibit any depth or dimension. Moira, the artist, for example likes to wander around naked in her photos. Why? What's her motivation? Daniel Benchimol dreams of having sex with her and even superimposes her face on a pair of Jamaican contortionist twins to have sex with in his dreams. He's also an absentee father who has no clue who his daughter's friends are and has time to fly to chase skirt while daughter is locked up in prison.
Speaking of said daughter, contrary to the author's intention of making her and her group inspiring and sympathetic, I found them young, foolish and playing at being revolutionaries. It started to read like a YA fantasy where a group of seven young greenhorn idealists manage to accomplish with their amateur tactics what experienced hardened guerrillas have not managed for decades despite massive loss of lives to their cause. I don't buy the sequence of events that led to the President's resignation and downfall; if he could be cowed by international pressure and the people's wishes, the country wouldn't be where it was for decades. As well, the quick wrapping up of 'All's well ends well" belies the shallow treatment of the issues at hand. I was reading a current non-fiction article on Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring. The dictator is no longer in power but unemployment, inflation and poverty rates are higher than ever. It was obvious too that the author favoured Karinguiri, I never had any trepidation that she was in any real danger from the authorities with plot armor to protect her. Heck these 'kind' authorities even offer her a scholarship to study in Lisbon. **mild spoilers ahead*** Sure enough, she continues her charmed life at a beach idyllic locale after that brief foray into activist protest adventuring.
The section on identity was interesting with a character asserting " You can change your passport. You can't change your identity." Daniel Benchimol is conspicuously referred to as "my Angolan friend" by his love rival as a put-down. A discussion of some of our greatest writers follows which I loved: is Clarice Lispector Ukrainian (left Ukraine as an infant) or Brazilian, does Nabokov write from a Russian perspective even when he writes in English, is Coetzee South African or Australian. I think the relevant dissection is which mantle of cultural/racial/nationalist identity with which authors wield their almighty pens and voices, invariably permeating into their works. Which brings it back full circle when Mr Agualasa is hailed as an Angolan author yet his parents are "white Portuguese settlers" (his own words). He is writing about the brutal years of Portuguese colonialism, the independence civil war in Angola between different paramilitary groups backed by foreign intervention and the lingering aftermath of colonialism.
https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/angola-war-of-independence-post-war-consolidation/
https://www.theroot.com/a-white-journalist-discovers-the-lie-of-portugal-s-colo-1790854283