The Real Life of Domingos Xavier

The Real Life of Domingos Xavier (A vida verdadeira de Domingos Xavier) is a novella written in 1961 by José Luandino Vieira, while he was in prison. It is the story of Domingos Xavier, a tractor driver with nationalist sympathies who was arrested, tortured, and assassinated by the Portuguese colonial police. The text is distinguished by its realism and its merciless depiction of white justice in pre-independence Angola. Translated into French as early as 1971 by Mario Pinto de Andrade and Chantal Tiberghien for Présence africaine, it served as the basis for the film Sambizanga (1972) directed by Sarah Maldoror. The English version (The Real Life of Domingos Xavier, trans. Michael Wolfers) was published by Heinemann in 1978.