The Book of Chameleons was written in Portuguese and won a Foreign Fiction Prize awarded by The Independent in 2007. This English edition was translated by Daniel Hahn, who also translated Agualusa's novel Creole — which won the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature — My Father's Wives, and the upcoming Rainy Season by Agualusa. So few books are translated, that it is a treat to have the opportunity to experience such literature.
The Book of Chameleons is touted by the publisher as a "completely original murder mystery." I would hesitate to categorize it as such, because it is so much more. The murder plays a trivial role. The story is really about identity and memories - what is real and true, and what is not. Who are we if we have no memory of a past? If we choose a different identity, we need new memories to accompany the falsified life. That's where Felix Ventura enters the scenes in Angola, a war-weary land where many seek to bury their pasts. For these, Felix builds new lives from the present backwards, complete with grand genealogies demanding remembrances of a different past and constructed in hope for a different future. He falsifies identities for a price.
Unfortunately for Felix's client, who becomes Jose Buchmann, the true past has a bent for breaking out, no matter who we pretend to be later on. This wealthy client claims a true background eerily similar to Felix's new girlfriend's. The lovely Angela Lucia, an itinerant photographer, becomes Felix's first romance. Her past and that of Felix's client collide one fateful night in El Vendador’s spacious home.
That manor house, ensconced in a tropical climate, is reminiscent of ones built on Caribbean islands or, perhaps, Brazil. A gecko (not a chameleon) describes it in luxurious detail and, not incidentally, narrates most of the tale. From his often birds-eye point of view, a complex, lyrical story unfolds, one which haunts the reader after the last page is turned. The gecko is Felix’s confidante, a nearly voiceless reincarnation of Jorge Luis Borges, for whom Agualusa wrote the book as a tribute. This story-within-a-story is meaningful maybe only to the author, who claims Latin American writers’ influences on his style. Writers like Borges, Marquez, and Amado.
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