Jose Eduardo Agualusa. Photo credit: LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images.

The Angolan author Jose Eduardo Agualusa will headline the 2020 African Book Festival in Berlin, curated by the Angolan musician and author Kalaf Epalanga and featuring the Congolese novelist Fiston Mwanza Mujila, France-based Burundian artist Gael Faye, British-Eritrean-Ethiopian novelist Sulaiman Addonai, and Brazilian feminist, journalist & academic Djamila Ribeiro.

The event—funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, presented by the literary agency InterKontinental, and themed “Telling the Origin Stories”—will be held from 17-19 April 2020, at Villa Elisabeth in Mitte. It will present “literature, poetry and music from Portuguese-speaking parts of the world.”

The inaugural festival in 2018, curated by the Nigerian novelist Olumide Popoola and featuring 40 writers, focused on Nigerian writing. The 2019 event, themed “Transitioning from Migration” and headlined by the novelist Ben Okri, was curated by the Zimbabwean novelist and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages and includes almost 50 books. So far, six of his novels have been translated into English. A General Theory of Oblivion was awarded the Dublin International Literary Award in 2017.

Agualusa will open the event with a session tagged “A Musical Journey Through Angolan History,” alongside curator Kalaf Epalanga, with music by Aline Frazão and Toty Sa’Med.

Go here for more information.