Pepetela is the word for “eyelash” in the Umbundu language, and it is a literal translation from the Portuguese of the surname of Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana, author of Yaka. Originally Pepetela adopted this name while fighting in the MPLA, or Movimento Popular para a Libertaç o de Angola (People’s Liberation Movement of Angola). A Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group, the MPLA was formed in the 1950s to gain Angola’s independence from Portugal. When Angola achieved independence in 1975, the fledgling nation’s poet-president António Augustino Neto called upon patriotic writers to establish a national literature. Pepetela was one of many who responded to this call. Like the protagonist of Yaka, Pepetela was born to parents of Portuguese descent in the Angolan port city of Benguela. He was educated in Angola, Portugal, France, and Algeria, eventually getting his degree in sociology. In adopting an Umbundu translation of his Portuguese name, the author creates for himself an identity that melds European and African elements in a way that is uniquely Angolan. Indeed, Pepetela is known—perhaps most ambitiously in Yaka—for tackling the theme of Angolanidade, the concept of what it means to be Angolan, in his literary work. Yaka, Pepetela’s fourth novel, won the Angolan national prize for literature in 1985.
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