Product details
- ISBN 9780571371440
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 31 Jul 2025
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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'Fizzes with energy.' GUARDIAN
'Insistent and propulsive and unforgettable.' MAAZA MENGISTE
'A hugely original, lyrical odyssey.' JOHNY PITTS
Hours before performing at one of Europe's most iconic music festivals, Kalaf is detained on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Trapped in his precarity, his thoughts soon strum to the beat of kuduro, the blistering, techno-infused Angolan music which has taken him from Luanda to Kristiansund, Beirut to Lisbon. Shifting between his reflections while incarcerated, the stories of a friend at the heart of Lisbon's dance scene and those of the immigration policeman who holds Kalaf's fate in his hands, Whites Can Dance Too is at once an exhilarating novel and a transporting paean to cultural roots, to freedom and to love.
Kalaf Epalanga is an Angolan musician and writer. Best known internationally for fronting the Lisbon-based dance collective Buraka Som Sistema, he is a celebrated columnist in Angola and Portugal. Whites Can Dance Too is his acclaimed debut novel; it was first published in Portugal by Editorial Caminho (2017). Epalanga is currently based in Berlin.
Daniel Hahn is a British writer, editor and translator. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) include fiction from Europe, Africa and the Americas and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. He is a former chair of the Society of Authors; in 2021 Hahn was made an OBE for his services to literature.
