Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s border literature in "As paisagens propícias"

The decentred perspective from which writer, anthropologist, filmmaker and intellectual Ruy Duarte de Carvalho directed his own gaze to Angola through his multifaceted work often embraced South Africa, and almost always a broader, cross-border Southern African geography. Especially the two novels As paisagens propícias (2005) and A terceira metade (2009) are paradigmatic in this context, since they were born and are mainly set between South-western Angola, North-western Namibia and South Africa – a ‘South in the South’ which permeates Carvalho’s literary project since its very beginning with the poem “O sul” (1972). Both novels can thus be considered at the same time as border writings that examine the cultural space between Angola and South Africa, and as literary texts that, having their origins in observations made during the author’s field work among the pastoralist society of Kuvale, are a testimony of an ecology of knowledges (Santos, Nunes, Meneses 2007) that has as its cornerstone a distinctive Southern, indigenous epistemology (Santos 2009). The chapter aims at mapping the multiple directions in which the inter-related histories of Angola and South Africa find their expression in Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s works, analysing not only the metafictional trilogy Os filhos de Próspero (2009), but also the collection of poems Ondula, savana branca (1982) and some excerpts from his essays.