Eruption of Insular Identities: A Comparative Study of Azorean and Cape Verdean Prose

Author/Contributor(s):	Medeiros, Brianna
Publisher:	Liverpool University Press
Date:	06/21/2020
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

The Eruption of Insular Identities; explores themes common to the literatures of the Azores and Cape Verde, two isolated archipelagos in the former Portuguese empire but contemporaneously in the Portuguese-speaking world. In the 1930s, writers from both archipelagos initiated projects to explore aorianidade and caboverdianidade, firmly placing narratives within their respective regional spaces, a tradition that would be continued by following generations. Despite vast differences in the realities in the two archipelagos in terms of race and politics, the insularity lent itself to two bodies of literature with striking similarities. The author's aim is to set out these similarities as a means to understanding the differences in rhetoric and treatment of this commonality. This book is the first extensive study comparing the literatures of the two archipelagos. Cape Verdean writer Germano Almeida won the Prmio Cames in 2018, one of the most prestigious awards for Portuguese-language authors; his work is explored extensively in the volume. The Eruption of Insular Identities; provides a perspective on Cape Verdean literature that brings to the fore the nation's social reality and literary production--its individual insularity--which distances it from most of the other Lusophone African nations, and provides an in-depth comparison to the second region under study, the Azores.