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The Book of Chameleons
 
 
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The Book of Chameleons (Paperback)

by Jose Eduardo Agualusa (Author), Daniel Hahn (Translator) "I was born in this house, and grew up here ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 194 pages
  • Publisher: Arcadia Books (2 Oct 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1905147155
  • ISBN-13: 978-1905147151
  • Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.7 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 569,029 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #85 in  Books > Fiction > World > Portuguese

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Product Description

Review

"'Told in short, ironic senses, The Man Who Sold Pasts is consistently taut and witty' - TLS"


Product Description

Typically for Agualusa this novel is beautifully written, rich in detail and imagination but always light and surprising. A delight to read and reread...It is quite some pages into "The Man Who Sold Pasts" before you realise the narrator - rather charming, witty as he is - is a lizard. A very articulate, and very friendly lizard, and - like all Agualusa's narrators - unusually perceptive. But a lizard nonetheless. This narrator lives on Felix Ventura's living-room wall; Felix, the lizard's friend and hero of our story, is a man who sells pasts - if you don't like yours, he can come up with an entirely new one for you, a new past - full of better memories, with a complete lineage (as distinguished as you like), photos and all. This is a book about the landscape of memory and its inconsistencies and randomness, about how we can remember things that never happened with extraordinary vividness, and forget things that did.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
I was born in this house, and grew up here. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully and distractingly simple, 1 Jul 2007
This review is from: The Book of Chameleons (Paperback)
What a great book! This is one of those rare pieces of literature that I will just have to go on and on about to friends, family and anyone who will listen!

Our narrator, Eulalio, (and this is not a spoiler - it says on the back cover!) is a gecko, living on the wall of a man who sells pasts. In his own inimitable style, he relates the goings on of the man, an albino Angolan, as he becomes entangled with The Foreigner and a woman who exudes light, two photographers viewing either end of a spectrum of an idea. It is truly a beautiful piece of prose, thanks to Hahn's deft handling of the translation, and the ease with which it reads belies the truth at it's heart. Whilst being a contemplation of memory, of truth, and of beauty, it is also a political commentary, a satire of bureaucracy and bureaucrats, and a great tale.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Borges in Angola, 30 Mar 2008
By Oliver Paz (Lisbon Portugal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Book of Chameleons (Paperback)
I really think that Agualusa's THE BOOK OF CHAMELEONS is something of a masterpiece. It's a wonderfully allusive, thought-provoking book where nothing is what it seems and all received wisdom and knowledge is challenged. It's beautifully translated by Daniel Hahn and is replete with powerful metaphors for African and Angolan history, without tearing on about them in the manner of, say, Chimamanda Adichie's HALF A YELLOW SUN. I read this book in a university department reading group and 5 out of the 6 of us thought it was something of a masterpiece.

Why Borges in Angola? Becuase there is a wonderful Borgesian style to the whole thing. In many ways the book is about the civil war in Angola, and yet it is rarely talked about directly. It is also about identity and race - the narrator is an albino in Angola, a wonderful metaphor - and yet again, it is rarely mentioned as such. Everything in the book operates indirectly and by implication, and there is a wonderful moral ambiguity in the book's ending which is a welcome respite from the dichotmous and simplistic morality so often found in the public sphere these days.

Really, this is the sort of book that is never written in Britain any more in our media-obsessed and hyper-publicity age. It's a quiet, thoughtful, brilliant book - which all lovers of literature will fall in love with.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An absolute treasure, 8 Aug 2006
This is simultaneously one of the most charming and unusual books I've read in awhile. With such a unique narrator, readers get a true fly-on-the-wall (or what have you) view of one man's journey. A quick read, Agualusa's poetic weaving of story flows together easily. I enjoyed Chameleon's equally as both great literature and beautiful poetry. The traces of magical realism reminded me a bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
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