In their review of the year, African Arguments – hosted by the Royal African Society and World Peace Foundation – have chosen Lara Pawson’s In the Name of the People as one of their books of 2014.

Exploring the events and aftermath of what happened on 27th May 1977, when a small demonstration against the MPLA – the ruling party of Angola – led to the slaughter of thousands of Angolans, Keith Somerville said of the book:

“[In the Name of the People] is a necessary examination of the way that the MPLA works – how groups within the movement gained power and purged all those (from the early leader Viriato da Cruz, through Martio Andrade to Nito Alves) who challenged its dominance and how that dominance bred the arrogance of power and led to the accumulation and misuse of Angola’s mineral wealth by a powerful few. But the book is much more than that, it is an account of the lives of those on both sides of the struggle in 1977, a series of portraits of life in Angola with its extremes of privilege and poverty and it reads like a thriller.”

Read Keith Somerville’s review in full over at African Arguments. ■

Further Reading

Extract: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre
An Angolan Reading List
Wall Street Journal review In the Name of the People