O planalto e a estepe

Pepetela. O planalto e a estepe. Lisbon. Dom Quixote. 2009. 190 pages. euro14. isbn 978-972-20-3784-6

Award-winning Angolan novelist Pepetela (b. 1941) is a prolific writer and a political personality whose novels deal with Angola's mythology as well as with the country's (post)colonial history and recent international politics. O planalto e a estepe (The plateau and the steppe) revisits part of the history of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (mpla) and the country's relationships with several communist regimes throughout the twentieth century. The soul of Julio, a retired general who died of lung cancer, revisits the protagonist's own life as a student in Moscow in the 1960s and as a soldier in Africa up to the moment of the writing process.