Once Upon a Time in Life

Once Upon a Time in Life is the title of the French edition (Gallimard, 1981) of the collection No antigamente, na vida by José Luandino Vieira. The volume brings together three short stories written in Cape Verde prison where the author had been exiled for supporting the Angolan nationalist movement, translated by Michel Laban in the collection « Du monde entier ». The stories depict the childhood of a small European lost in the shantytowns of Luanda, evoking the fantastic world of Angola’s children through the « bantouisée » language of the musseque.