Africa and Timor: In praise of rare books

René Pélissier’s review essay surveys poorly circulated publications concerning Africa and East Timor. The available opening and closing sections attribute their rarity to distribution problems, specialized subjects, cost, censorship and language barriers, compounded by limited media coverage and public-library acquisition. The opening reviews literature on Portugal’s colonial war, studies of Hélder Macedo, politics in Lusophone Africa, and reportage, fiction and military histories concerning Spanish Sahara. Pélissier values the documentary detail of several works and calls for a systematic bibliography of colonial-war literature. The closing discusses a biographical account of the counterinsurgency figure Roxo, noting chronological inaccuracies, before examining hunting memoirs and safari guides. These books describe remote areas of Mozambique and Angola, while prompting questions about how hunting revenues are distributed. Pélissier strongly praises the Atlas of East Timor for its physical, human, economic and political geography and its global and regional framing, but notes that nineteenth- and twentieth-century history is largely absent from its maps. Further publications address language and identity, a Czech introduction to East Timorese history, and journalism following the 1999 massacres. A cited survey reports that 55% of respondents considered knowledge of Portuguese important to being a “true Timorese,” compared with 86.5% for being Catholic.