The Book of Chameleons

by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

It is some pages in to The Book of Chameleons before you realise that the narrator - rather charming, witty as he is - a lizard, living on Felix Ventura's living room wall. Felix trades in an usual commodity - he sells pasts. If you don't like yours, he can come up with an entirely new one for you, full of better memories and with a complete lineage. This is a book about the landscape of memory, its inconsistencies and its randomness.

(From Publisher )

José Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo, Angola in 1960. For a number of years he lived in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro but has now returned to Angola.
He is the author of The Book Of Chameleons, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2007. His previous work include Creole, which has evoked comparisons to Brice Chatwin's The Viceroy of Ouidah, was awarded the Portugese Grand Prize for Literature, and is a bestseller in Angola, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.
Fans of his work include Margaret Drabble, Pauline Melville, Richard Zimler and Lisa Appignanesi