Um ‘quase-africano:’ Re-significações de Fradique Mendes em Nação crioula, de José Eduardo Agualusa

In this article, I present Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa’s Nação crioula: A correspondência secreta de Fradique Mendes (1997) as a post-modern parody of the ctional character Fradique Mendes from Eça de Queirós’ A correspondência de Fradique Mendes (1900). Through parody, Agualusa creates historiographic metafiction meant to question the possibility of objective representations of reality, an issue central to post-modern aesthetics. I further propose that this questioning extends a discussion that is already suggested by Eça’s original text at the turn of the twentieth century, when concerns about the possibility of objective representations of reality also came to the fore.