2 See Renato Rosaldo on Colonial (or Imperial) nostalgia.

The subject of these stories is a wandering, transitory nature that cannot be separated from the background of violence and disorientation produced by the succession of wars the country has undergone and the dispersal that ensued. This ravaged country is one that cannot offer hospitality, and receives its visitors and returning citizens with landmines that explode under their feet. In effect, I want to suggest that one of the text’s underlying questions is the possibility of inserting oneself in a literary and intellectual history without being tagged as a traitor to one’s nation.ĢThe title of José Eduardo Agualusa’s collection of short stories, in which “ A Armadilha” is published – Passageiros em Transito Novos contos para viajar (2006) – reveals that the leading thread of this collection of stories is the destabilized and deracinated existence of those living in a post-colonial and post-civil war Angola. Although not directly addressed by the narrative, one of the subtexts of Agualusa’s text thus seems to be a reflection on the possibility of creating an Angolan literature, written in Portuguese, with European references, without necessarily betraying the spirit of emancipation, nor the rupture with the colonial legacy that Agualusa’s narrative marks and to which it bears witness. Indeed, a story such as “ A Armadilha,” written in the colonial language of the Portuguese, and evoking European literary texts, inevitably urges one to reflect on the questions of indebtedness to colonialism, and the betrayal of the newly independent, postcolonial nation, all of which might be expected when there is a recognition of debt to former colonial powers.

Yet beyond simply thematizing homecoming and political betrayal, Agualusa’s narrative also engages the question of a literary legacy of exile, betrayal and revenge, and invites one to consider what it means to write from the locus of a post-colonial state.

“ A Armadilha” portrays the return to Angola of a character who had left twenty-five years earlier – coinciding with the beginning of the Civil War, and the end of the war of independence from Portugal in 1975 – and the vengeful rancor of those left behind. 1Despite its parable-like style, José Eduardo Agualusa’s short story “ A Armadilha” – “The Trap – revisits the timeless tale of homecoming in a localizable and historically determined setting.

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