A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Free Yo’ Mind; Yo’ Ass Will Follow”
- the film ‘Platoon’

In revolution, everything is suspended - not just civility and justice and news broadcasts, but the lives and the immediate concerns of everyone touched by it. Revolution no matter what its motive is a brutal and brutalizing event. By definition its outcome is uncertain and its effects unpredictable. By-standers are incidental and unregarded victims. Except for those rare people who can by chance or guile hide from revolutionary chaos, not just by physically avoiding lawless horror but also by sustaining a state of mental distance - oblivion - from the reality that surrounds them. The Angolan revolution in the 1970’s is simply an instance of these general facts.

The price of physical survival is complete psychic alienation from one’s surroundings. So Luda, Agualusa’s protagonist, agoraphobic, incompetent in the world of men and violence, “didn’t belong to anywhere.” She is not Angolan and no longer Portuguese. Even her pet dog becomes a dangerous enemy through hunger. She instinctively knows that revolution is self-perpetuating, that revolution breeds counter-revolution. It, not stability, is the natural order of things. But “Even evil needs to take a rest sometimes.” Consequently the Angolan revolution along with its Cuban facilitators ultimately ensure that “The socialist system was dismantled by the very same people who had set it up, and capitalism rose from the ashes, as fierce as ever.” So to stay alive, stay hidden - if possible for decades. Either behind a wall or out in the open by feigning insanity. Both strategies are appropriate, and functionally equivalent.

A persistent symbol in A General Theory of Oblivion is diamonds. Diamonds are the reason for the revolution; they motivate Luda’s isolation; they help to keep her alive; and form the material connection among Agualusa’s characters. Diamonds also resist destruction. This is important because “‘The African sky is much bigger than ours,’ [Luda] explained to her sister. ‘It crushes us.’” The only thing the African sky doesn’t crush is the hardest natural substance on earth. Oblivion provokes a reanimation of the diamonds of memory about Luda’s past, a recalling of her own story, which had resisted destruction just below the surface of her consciousness for a lifetime. So, it appears, even revolution can be therapeutic.

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