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Set in contemporary Angola, The Book of Chameleons is populated with characters whose stories never quite settle.
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Book Review

The Book of Chameleons

By José Eduardo Agualusa

Published by Arcadia Books

It is some pages in before you realise that the narrator - rather charming, witty as he is - is a lizard, living on Felix Ventura's living room wall.
Felix trades in an unusual 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.
The Book of Chameleons won the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Read an article by Daniel Hahn, the novel's translator.

Translator: Daniel Hahn

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