In the Name of the People

Reviews / Votes

'Lara Pawson's book is a timely and significant intervention in contemporary Angolan history and the first book length study of these events in English. Pawson is an investigative journalist and historical sleuth of rare candour. Her high ethical standards, probing questions, sharp critical gaze, and keen observations make for a compelling text. She takes the reader in and along as she asks of herself and others difficult questions about painful times. While she had set out to discover "the unwritten truth", Pawson instead unveils a still more complex landscape of memory and history, mined with silence, and knit together with complicities, stories, and the underside of ideals.' - Marissa Moorman, Associate Professor of History, Indiana University; 'Lara Pawson's book is not only the first English-language work to address the 27th May in depth, but her personal account of trying to unravel the complex knots of memory, violence, identity and politics in post-independence Angola offers a richly detailed, nuanced and emotional psychogramme of a nation simultaneously fixated on and forcefully repressing its unresolved past. She vividly evokes the difficulties of doing research in and on Angola, and brilliantly captures the everyday paranoia of life in Luanda, ranging from grandiose conspiracy theories to intimate recollections of loss and the broken promises of independence. This is played out against the backdrop of an increasingly cosmopolitan metropolis that is changing and reinventing itself at breakneck speed, which leaves little space for alternative recollections of the past that do not fit the master narrative of "peace and reconstruction". I highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding the social and political dynamics of contemporary Angola.' - Jon Schubert, Senior Africa Analyst, IHS Country Risk; 'Lara Pawson's book narrates the events of the failed coup d'etat carried out by Nito Alves' followers against the then president Agostinho Neto in 1977 in Angola. In response, the forces of Neto tortured and killed thousands and thousands of people, and kept many other people in jail for at least two years. The relevance of Pawson's book, which I wholeheartedly commend, is not only that it gives a fair and balanced picture of the tragic events occurred in 1977. The upside of the book is that it is focused on the afterlives of the coup, through, primarily, the description of how the political regime in Angola has brought about one of the most repressive state apparatus in Africa, and, secondarily, through the myriad ways people on both sides of the tragedy cope with those memories. The work that Pawson has done here is long overdue. Her starting point is that although in Angola people refer to a certain "golpe" (coup d'etat) to justify their political indifference, there is almost nothing written about the 27th May 1977. Even many British journalists, who have chronicled the process of Angolan independence since 1975, have been complicit in silencing the 27th May 1977. My impression is that by going through these layers of silence and complicity, Pawson is asking very deep and provocative questions about the relationship between past and present in Angolan politics. There is no way politics in contemporary Angola may be understood without an engagement with the causes and the consequences of the 27th May 1977.' - Antonio Tomas, Research Fellow, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda; 'A brilliant piece of sleuthing, research, reportage and an example of unblinking determination...I greatly admire this book.' - Paul Theroux; 'Lara Pawson has a poet's eye for telling detail, a priest's empathy for human idiosyncrasy and the dogged determination of a sleuth. Fired up by her determination to discover what really happened on May 27, 1977 in Angola, she skewers in the process of this gripping investigation both the hypocrisy of the Angolan government and the sloppy naivety of the British Left.' - Michela Wrong; 'brings both a journalist's and a novelist's sensibility to one of the most controversial episodes of Angola's post-colonial history...with detailed and often moving accounts...a highly principled, nuanced and complex book, essential reading for anyone interested in Angola's recent history, and its place in African political history more broadly - John Spall, Africa in Words