The fantastic as a tool of anti-colonialist discourse in Saramago’s Stone Raft and Pepetela’s Kianda’s Desire

Abstract

This article does a comparative reading of the fantastic elements of The Stone Raft and Kianda’s Desire as a response to the hegemonic neo-colonial/capitalist discourse of Northern Europe and the United States in Portugal and Angola during a period in which both “inferior” countries were rebuilding after long periods of socio-political uncertainty. The text gives examples of the anti-colonialist discourse in the two novels through the reactions and behaviors of the protagonists in the face of fantastic events and, simultaneously, in response to the imposition of foreign socio-cultural norms.