NATION AND IDENTITY IN GUINEA-BISSAU LITERATURE

Abstract

With the achievement of political independence, Guinea-Bissau, asmall country located in the westcoast of Africa, assumes the difficult task to constitute itself as a nation and, in this way, to forge its national identity. Believing that literature plays a singular role within this field, the present work, through the trilogy written by the authorof the first national novel, AbdulaiSila, aimsto analyze how these complex constructions are founded. The novels A última tragédia (1995), Eterna paixão (1994) e Mistida (1997), since they deal with different periods of the territory in question, from colonization to post-independence, make possible an including and elucidative analysis, through the use of hope as main characteristic, in opposite to the difficult reality of post-independence. Thus, the nation and the identity of Guinea-Bissau, a process still under construction, alreadyallow to see its hybrid characteristic, where the traditional and the modern are equally conjugated and interlaced.