Augusto dos Santos Abranches Driving Force of Cultural Transits

Augusto dos Santos Abranches, full intellectual – poet, essayist, playwright, reporter, journalist, illustrator, bookseller and editor – was a man in transit in three continents and he well represents the mobility of printed literature in the second post-war period. Even if he has almost fallen into oblivion today, in the ten-year period spent in Mozambique, Abranches was an important reference point for the cultural formation of the new generation of writers: he gave a remarkable contribution to the diffusion of literary “clandestine” material in Mozambique and he was the keystone in the flows and connections between Mozambique and Angola, as well as among the African colonies, Brazil and Portugal. Symbolizing the dynamism, typical of the late colonial period, and being himself an intellectual constantly in motion, always escaping from the persecutions of censorship and of the PIDE, he also represents the fight for freedom of thought and expression.