José Eduardo Agualusa is an Angolan writer of Brazilian and Portuguese descent, born in the city of Huambo. He has published over 20 books including novels, short stories and other types. Today he divides his time between Lisbon and Luanda, but has lived in Recife and Rio de Janeiro, which is why he is considered an “Afro-Luso-Brazilian.”

He was awarded literary fellowships from the National Center of Culture (1997), the Orient Foundation (2000), and the German institution Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (2001). The following works were, respectively, the products of these fellowships: “Creole Nation,” “A Stranger in Goa” and “The Year the Zombie Took Over Rio.”

He is the host of the program “A hora das cigarras”, (Cicada Hour), which discusses poetry and African music, on the RTP-Africa channel, and he is a columnist for the Portuguese magazine LER. In 2006, he was one of the parties responsible for launching publisher Língua Geral (Language General), dedicated exclusively to the Portuguese language. Three years later he released the novel “Tropical Baroque.”

His books have been translated into dozens of languages, ​​and his novel “Past Salesman” received the Foreign Fiction Award from English newspaper the Independent in 2007. He is the author of plays such as “Geração W” (Generation W) and “Aquela Mulher” (That Woman) among others, and will be curator of the lectures at Back2Black 2011.