Pepetela

His full name is Artur Carlos Mauricio Pestana dos Santos, an Angolan author, born in the coastal town of Benguela. He took the name Pepetela, which means ‘eyelash’, during the war of liberation 1961-74 and he has used it since then as a pseudonym. His father had Portuguese parents but he too was born in Angola; his mother’s family had a Portuguese background but had lived in Angola for five generations. One of Artur’s uncles was a journalist with distinct left-wing sympathies, and this aroused his nephew’s interest in politics.