Manuel Lopes

Manuel António de Sousa Lopes was born in Mindelo, on 23rd December 1907 and died in Lisbon, on 25th January 2005 he was a fictionist, poet and essayist, one of the founders of modern Cape Verdean literature and who, with Baltasar Lopes da Silva and Jorge Barbosa, was responsible for the creation of the magazine Claridade.

Manuel Lopes wrote his texts in Portuguese, although he used expressions in Cape Verdean Creole in his works. He was one of those responsible for making the world aware of the calamities, droughts and deaths in São Vicente and, above all, in Santo Antão.

He emigrated when he was still young and his family settled in 1919 in Coimbra (Portugal), where he did his high school studies. Four years later, he returned to Cape Verde as an employee of an English company. In 1936, he founded with Baltasar Lopes the magazine Claridade, which would produce nine issues. In 1944 he was transferred to the island of Faial, in the Azores, where he lived until he settled in Lisbon, in 1959, where he lived until his death.

Among his best known works are: Chuva Braba (novel, 1956, Prémio Fernão Mendes Pinto), O Galo que Cantou na Baía (short stories, 1959, again Prémio Fernão Mendes Pinto) and Os Flagelados do Vento Leste (novel, 1959, Prémio Meio Milénio do Achamento de Cabo Verde). Os Flagelados do Vento Leste was adapted for a film directed by António Faria in 1987.

But Manuel Lopes was the author of other titles such as Horas Vagas (poetry, 1934), Poemas de Quem Ficou (poetry, 1949), Temas Cabo-verdianos (essays, 1950), Crioulo e Outros Poemas (poetry, 1964), As Personagens de Ficção e os seus Modelos (essay, 1971) and Falucho Ancorado (anthology, 1997).