Introduction

Abstract This chapter introduces the pennames of Portuguese painter and poet António Quadros, who published poetry and prose in Mozambique under the names João Pedro Grabato Dias, Frey Ioannes Garabatus, and Mutimati Barnabé João. The author frames his analysis of Quadros’s engagement with the question of Mozambican authorship with an interrogation of the theories of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. He makes the case for studying authorship and readership, in the Mozambican context, as indissociable questions. The author sets out the key features of Quadros’s literary production and situates his use of pennames in the context of colonial censorship. Identify some of the key difficulties with approaching Quadros’s cryptic and inaccessible texts.