Flame in Water
Tags
Summary
Ana Olímpia's father was a Congolese prince detained by the Portuguese, and her mother was a Black slave woman, so she was born into slavery. Later, a prominent local Angolan merchant took an interest in her, gave her a European education, and married her. After inheriting her husband's fortune, she rose to become a leading figure in Luanda, all the while unaware of the disaster approaching...
Through letters to his godmother, lover, and friends, Vladimir pieces together the fate of an extraordinary woman. Across layer upon layer of seawater, between fiction and reality, "I am gradually reborn as another woman.... Angola is an intimate disease, a vague, uncertain pain pulsing in a distant corner of my soul."
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who like Agualusa, Eça, and other Lusophone writers and are open to narrative experimentation
- Readers interested in Angola's colonial history and the fates of women across races
- Those used to epistolary, multi-perspective puzzle novels and not eager for a single answer
- Readers who want to understand the complex relationship between Portugal and Africa through literature
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting linear plots, clear protagonists, and definite endings
- Those uncomfortable with depictions of colonial violence, slavery, and identity oppression
- Readers who want only light historical stories and do not wish to grapple with narrative puzzles
Reading tips
- Read the main text first, then revisit the timeline of letters and characters to identify shifts in the narrator's identity
- Fradique and Ana Olímpia can be seen as two mutually illuminating threads; note who speaks for whom
- Do not force yourself to understand every jump at once; note recurring images such as seawater and disease
- After finishing, read a little background on Angolan colonial history; the characters' choices will be clearer on a second look
About the publisher
Shanghai People's Publishing House is a comprehensive publisher whose list focuses on academic monographs and general-interest titles in philosophy, social sciences, politics and law, economics and management, and history. Among its books are Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties History in the Chinese Dynastic History series; The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in foreign literature; the Wenjing Classical Translation Illustrated Edition of The Complete Greek Tragedies of Euripides; and works of social theory such as Max Weber's Economy and Society and Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Its authors include Wang Zhongluo, J.R.R. Tolkien, Luo Niansheng, and Zhou Zuoren.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 致茹阿尔夫人 罗安达，1868年5月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 罗安达，1868年6月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 罗安达，1868年6月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 本格拉，1872年5月
- 致埃萨·德·盖罗斯 罗安达，1872年8月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 罗安达，1872年8月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 巴黎，1872年12月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 巴黎，1873年1月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 里斯本，1876年7月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 罗安达，1876年9月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 罗安达，1876年9月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 新里东杜，1876年10月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 奥林达，1876年12月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 奥林达，1877年2月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 卡雅伊巴庄园，1877年3月
- 致埃萨·德·盖罗斯 卡雅伊巴庄园，1877年3月
- 致埃萨·德·盖罗斯 卡雅伊巴庄园，1877年5月
- 致埃萨·德·盖罗斯 里约热内卢，1877年6月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 萨拉戈萨别墅，1877年7月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 萨拉戈萨别墅，1877年8月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 巴黎，1877年9月
- 致埃萨·德·盖罗斯 巴黎，1877年11月
- 致安娜·奥林匹亚 巴黎，1878年4月
- 致茹阿尔夫人 卡雅伊巴庄园，1878年10月
- 致埃萨·德·盖罗斯 巴黎，1888年10月
- 弗拉迪克的流转与克里奥尔性的呈现——代译后记
FAQ
Will not having read Eça affect my reading?
Is Ana Olímpia a real historical figure?
Why does the narration feel jumpy?
Do I need to know Angolan history before reading?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
José Eduardo Agualusa is a writer of foreign literature who writes in Portuguese. His nationality, dates of birth and death, and other biographical details remain unclear in publicly available sources, and four of his works are included in the collection. His representative works include The Book of Chameleons, The Living and the Rest, A General Theory of Oblivion, and Fire in the Water. Judging from these titles and the common classification, his writing often revolves around themes such as memory, forgetting, history, and identity, showing a marked speculative quality and a tendency toward literary experimentation, with narratives that move between reality and imagination. Because public information is limited, his specific experiences and chronology of works cannot yet be described in detail, but the works mentioned above are enough to show his distinctive profile in contemporary foreign literature, making him suitable for readers interested in memory writing and narrative innovation.
Wang Yuan is an author whose works span several fields. Public information about him is limited, and his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background are not clearly recorded. Judging from the six works held in the collection, his writing interests extend across foreign literature, theoretical criticism, and financial writing. In literature, he focuses on European history and memory, with representative works such as The Siege of Lisbon, The Living and the Rest, The Theory of Forgetting, and Fire in the Water, which center on individual fate and collective memory amid historical change and combine intellectual reflection with readability. He has also written on theoretical topics and contemporary China, including Encountering Chinese Costume Art and Innovation and the Future, a dialogue with builders of Xiong'an, showing a tendency to connect cultural observation with real-world issues. Overall, his subjects are wide-ranging and his style has not settled into a single fixed form; his work may interest readers drawn to cross-disciplinary writing.
