¹ Hamilton, Russell G., “Síntese e Conclusões,”Les littératures africaines de langue portugaise: Actes du Colloque International—Paris, 28–29–30 Novembre, 1 Decembre 1984, eds. Gulbenkian, Fundação Calouste. (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1985; my edition says 1989), 561–67Google Scholar; “O primeiro caso, ou, melhor, estória, passou-se em Luanda onde, em 1978, se realizou uma feira do livro numa praça pública. Um repórter de televisão circulava entre as barracas a entrevistar compradores de livro, entre eles uma senhora de panos. Evidentemente, tratava-se de uma analfabeta a comprar livros. Portanto, depois de averiguar que a tal senhora de panos tinha uma preferência por autores nacionais—isto é, escritores cujas obras saíram em edições da União dos Escritores Angolanos -, o repórter indagou, com toda delicadeza, se, por acaso, “a camarada sabe ler?” A senhora retorquiu que por acaso não sabia ler, mas que comprava os livros porque eram autores nacionais e que essas obras seriam uma herança para os seus netos que sim saberiam ler” (561). My translation.

² Stella, Marcello Giovanni Pocai, “Una rosa en medio del Atlántico: La sociogénesis de la editorial caboverdiana Rosa de Porcelana,” El Taco En La Brea 1 (15): 2022 (https://doi.org/10.14409/tb.2022.15.e0063)Google Scholar.

³ I have the consent of all the interviewees to mention their names.

⁴ Moretti, Franco, “Conjectures on World Literature,” New Left Review 1 (2000): 54–68 Google Scholar.

⁵ The only publisher I was unable to interview, due to scheduling problems, was Ondjaki.

⁶ Noël, Sophie, L’édition indépendante critique: Engagements politiques et intellectuels (Villeurbanne: Presses de l’enssib, 2012; https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pressesenssib.1104)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Noël, L’édition indépendante critique, 2012.

⁸ Dragomir, Lucia, L’Union des Écrivains: Une institution transnationale à l’Est (Paris: Belin, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁹ Notwithstanding their power, some literary groups, for instance, the creators of literary magazine Charrua in Mozambique, were able to confront and subvert some of the politics of the Mozambican Writer’s Association, even if for a short period of time. Helgesson, Stefan, “The Little Magazine as a World-Making Form: Literary Distance and Political Contestation in Southern African Journals,” Literature and the Making of the World: Cosmopolitan Texts, Vernacular Practices, ed. Helgesson, Stefan, Bodin, Helena, and Alling, Annika Mörte (New York: Bloomsbury, 2022), 215–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Casanova, Pascale, A república mundial das letras (São Paulo: Estação liberdade, 2002)Google Scholar; Helgesson, Stefan, Transnationalism in Southern African Literature: Modernists, Realists, and the Inequality of Print Culture (New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar; Tristan Leperlier, “La langue des champs” COnTEXTES 28 (2020 [https://doi.org/10.4000/contextes.929]); Landgraf, Flávia Landucci, Políticas culturais de um Estado revolucionário: Moçambique no pós-independência (Salvador: UFBA, 2018)Google Scholar; Dragomir, L’Union des Écrivains, 2007.

¹⁰ Magnier, Bernard et al, ed., “Littératures d’Angola” Notre Librairie 115 (1994): 2–141 Google Scholar.

¹¹ In both the Mozambican and Cape Verdean cases, the institutes dedicated to book production were not as successful as the Angolan one. Significantly, in the first case it took seven years after the end of the Portuguese rule to the creation of AEMO, and as Chissano points out the association never had a substantial budget nor the publishing equipment needed until the beginning of the 1990s. In comparison, the Cape Verdean institute was created just one year after the independence, but as Varela affirms, it just started working in 1985 with scarce resources. The Guinean case is particular because, as Tony Tcheka says in an interview, Mario Pinto de Andrade, who had left Angola due to internal MPLA disputes, replicated the Angolan model, giving great importance to the formation of a writers’ union and an institution that promoted books, even with a more difficult financial condition and a literary tradition that was less long lasting than in Angola; we see in the country an important production of works by national authors, especially poetry after 1975. Varela, Tomé. “L’Institut capverdien du livre” Notre Librairie 112 (1993): 80–83 Google Scholar; Pedro Chissano, “L’association des éccrivains mozambicains” 113 (1993): 86–87; Magnier, “Littératures d’Angola,” 1994.

¹² Can, Nazir Ahmed, O Campo literário moçambicano: tradução do espaço e formas de insilio (São Paulo: Kapulana, 2020)Google Scholar.

¹³ We have also tried to get in touch with Angolan publishers from Mayamba and Castelo das Edições, the former answered some of our questions but made it clear that the focus of the publishing house was scientific books, textbooks, dictionaries, and not literature.

¹⁴ Maybe the success experienced by the state cultural politics for publishing can explain why so little room has been left to private enterprises to grow in Angola. Also, we can think about the centrality of the Angolan Writers’ Union as the main gatekeeper for access to publishing, circulation, and consecration in the country. These, however, are still hypotheses to be explored. Can, O campo literário moçambicano.

¹⁵ In the absence of a complete statistical panorama of book production in Mozambique, I have also interviewed the director of Plural Editores of Mozambique, a subsidiary of the Portuguese publishing house Porto Editora. He stated that the Mozambican branch produces only school textbooks, dictionaries, and grammar books, tailored for the government purchases for schools. They had not produced a single fiction book until 2007, when they launched their first children’s book. It is in opposition to these large textbook publishers that the independents assert themselves.

¹⁶ Gerbaudo, Analía, “Las editoriales cartoneras en américa latina (2003–2019): una nano-intervención en la construcción de la World Literature,” Alea: Estudos Neolatinos 22.3 (2020): 259–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; José de Souza Muniz Júnior, Girafas e bonsais: editores ‘independentes’ na Argentina e no Brasil (1991–2015) (São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, 2016 [https://doi:10.11606/T.8.2016.tde-28112016-103559]); Venturini, Santiago, “La nueva edición argentina: la traducción de literatura en pequeñas y medianas editoriales (2000–2019),” Cuadernos LIRICO 20 (2019): 1–16 (https://doi.org/10.4000/lirico.8691)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Can, O campo literário moçambicano.

¹⁸ As stated, by Can, we can observe, both in Angola and Mozambique, a strong and affluent production of poetry, ever since the beginning of the anticolonial struggle. In the Mozambican case, it took at least twenty years, until the first post-independence novel appeared: Ualalapi by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, in 1987; Can, O campo literário moçambicano.

¹⁹ Bourdieu, Pierre, O poder simbólico (Lisbon: Difel, 1989)Google Scholar; Bourdieu, Pierre, Razões práticas: Sobre a teoria da ação (Campinas: Papirus, 1996)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Ducournau, Claire, La Fabrique des classiques africains: écrivains d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone (Paris, CNRS éditions, 2017)Google Scholar.

²¹ Leite, Ana Mafalda et al., “Filinto Elísio,” in Nação e Narrativa Pós-colonial IV. Literatura & Cinema: Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau e São Tomé e Príncipe—Entrevistas, ed. Leite et al. (Lisboa: Colibri, 2018), 103–21Google Scholar.

²² Noël, L’édition indépendante critique; Venturini, “La nueva edición argentina.”

²³ This is a sensitive point for several of the independent editors interviewed, namely the need to have catalogs with more African authors published by African publishers on African soil.

²⁴ Sandra Tamele organizes an annual translation contest in Mozambique to stimulate the emergence of new translators. The contest’s prize is the publication of the work in her publishing house.