Yaka, Pepetela’s fourth novel, won the Angolan national prize for literature in 1985.
Angola. Angola is a tropical nation below the equator on the southwestern coast of Africa. Roughly 14 times the size of Portugal, Angola extends from the Congo River basin in the north to the edges of the Kalahari Desert in the south. Angola’s coastal lowlands in the west give way to an ascending series of plateaus, rising eastward to the nation’s inland borders. While the coast is hot and humid with poor soil, the interior plateaus offer fertile soil and a healthy climate. Benguela, where much of the novel takes place, is a port city midway down the Angolan coast. The area surrounding Benguela is watered by numerous small streams and rivers, and is homeland to the Ovimbundu people, who constitute the largest ethnic group in Angola and speak Umbundu. There are seven other major indigenous groups in Angola. Of these, two are represented in the novel. The Cuvales, a subgroup of the Herero of southwest Angola, are herders who place high cultural value on cattle. The Yaka, or Jaga, live near the northern border of Angola, where they migrated sometime in the sixteenth century.
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