"Chronicling" from the Center of the Periphery: "Estórias Contadas (Tales Told)" by Germano Almeida

Abstract: Germano Almeida, one of Lusophone Africa’s and, certainly, Cape Verde’s most prolific writers, is best known for O Testamento do Sr. Napumoceno da Silva Araújo (1989). A movie based on this first novel has received excellent reviews and delighted viewers in Europe and the United States. What has engaged moviegoers and readers alike is Almeida’s talents as a teller of tales. Almeida’s novels, short stories, and non-fiction contain narratives and dialogue that are replete with humor and a perceptiveness that reflects the author’s unremitting quest for historical truths. What comes forth in Almeida’s estórias is lived history and social satire recounted from an often autobiographical and editorializing perspective. Nowhere is the latter more apparent than in Estórias Contadas (1998), a collection of 55 crónicas, originally published in the Lisbon newspaper Público. Almeida makes clever use of the crónica, which, in the Portuguese-speaking world, has evolved into a unique literary genre, with elements of quotidian history and op-ed provocation. The present article focuses on several of the crónicas that elucidate Almeida’s talent for historicizing and storying the uniqueness of Cape Verdean identity and the archipelago’s paradoxically central and peripheral location in Africa, the former Portuguese empire, and the broader world.