The Utopian Generation

A seminal novel of African decolonization available for the first time in English translation.Lisbon, 1961. To escape surveillance by the dictatorship’s secret police, African students meet at the Casa, a campus club, where they dream of the homelands they will free from colonialism. Following four young revolutionaries who dream of building an epic campaign for a liberated, socialist Angola, The Utopian Generation charts the intertwined destinies of Sara, an idealistic doctor; Aníbal, an intense intellectual; Vítor, an aspiring political leader; and Malongo, a party-hopping soccer player. But when repression scatters them, they move from Europe to Africa, from idealism to disillusionment, from terror and battlefield violence to love, loss, grief, corruption, and cold-blooded calculation.Vast in scope yet intricate and revealing in its insights into the psychological tensions of colonialism, The Utopian Generation is widely considered in the Portuguese-speaking world an essential novel of African decolonization—and is now available in English translation for the first time.