what is the literature of Timor?
There are ready-made postcolonial answers to such questions. For many people, the literature of Timor Lorosae (the state on the eastern end of the island, former Portuguese colony) is simply a tiny Lusophone body of writing, with such names as Luís Cardoso. But of course, the question is much more complex.
The indigenous population of the island, that to some degree accepted Christianity, and thus contrasting sharply with Indonesian Muslim identity, has an oral heritage of its own, but no written tradition. Before the coming of the Portuguese in the 16th century, only some Chinese and Javanese traders were visiting these shores for the trade of sandal. The Portuguese were the first to settle down, yet the production of any written records continued extremely slow. It was only in the 20th century that the islands got more coherent literary expression, with such books as A ilha Verde e Vermelha de Timor, by Alberto Osório de Castro, published in fascicles in the review Seara Nova, in Lisbon, between 1928 and 1929. It was hardly more than a travelogue written in poetic prose, where the author jotted down his observations concerning the land and its inhabitants. Another tiny book was that of Paulo Braga, A Ilha dos Homens Nus, in which the island "of naked men" is almost a libertarian paradise, with its fraternity and its erotic freedom.
The independence of Timor was proclaimed at the moment of the disintegration of the Portuguese colonial empire, in 1975. Yet merely a few days later the trouble with Indonesia began. Those troubled years of struggle have been portrayed in a 2009 Australian movie Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly and based on a novel by Jill Jolliffe, The Balibo Conspiracy. It is a story of five Australian journalists who disappeared somewhere south of Dili.
The indigenous population of the island, that to some degree accepted Christianity, and thus contrasting sharply with Indonesian Muslim identity, has an oral heritage of its own, but no written tradition. Before the coming of the Portuguese in the 16th century, only some Chinese and Javanese traders were visiting these shores for the trade of sandal. The Portuguese were the first to settle down, yet the production of any written records continued extremely slow. It was only in the 20th century that the islands got more coherent literary expression, with such books as A ilha Verde e Vermelha de Timor, by Alberto Osório de Castro, published in fascicles in the review Seara Nova, in Lisbon, between 1928 and 1929. It was hardly more than a travelogue written in poetic prose, where the author jotted down his observations concerning the land and its inhabitants. Another tiny book was that of Paulo Braga, A Ilha dos Homens Nus, in which the island "of naked men" is almost a libertarian paradise, with its fraternity and its erotic freedom.
The independence of Timor was proclaimed at the moment of the disintegration of the Portuguese colonial empire, in 1975. Yet merely a few days later the trouble with Indonesia began. Those troubled years of struggle have been portrayed in a 2009 Australian movie Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly and based on a novel by Jill Jolliffe, The Balibo Conspiracy. It is a story of five Australian journalists who disappeared somewhere south of Dili.
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