“Making-Of” of Itself: Documentary as a Theme and as a Formal Principle in José Eduardo Agualusa's As Mulheres do Meu Pai

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the presence and the importance of concepts and contents related to cinema in the built of the novel As Mulheres do Meu Pai, by Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa. The text of the novel itself informs that the writer’s initial project was the script to a movie. Besides, its main character is a documentary filmmaker who, throughout the plot, produces a movie about his claimed biological father. Finally, the novel has a reflexive structure that reminds the type of documentary known as a making-of, for it comments and justifies elements of its own constitution as a literary work.