A good example of a novel that isn't written with concerted attention. The author's mind wanders, and I can imagine him thinking of many things beside his novel. The book is divided into many sections, some very short, and I picture him writing a section one morning over coffee (and adding a bit about coffee in the book), then going off to meet friends, then skipping a day, maybe thinking of his novel over dinner... I imagine him living too much in his own life, as an Angolan novelist in Lisbon, and too little in the imaginative world he is thinking of creating.

The problem with a novel written in this way, with intermittent and uneven attention, is that the lack of continuous imaginative commitment seeps into the narrative itself. It becomes difficult to stay immersed in the novel. The idea that the narrator is a gecko is fun, sometimes; and the idea that the main character invents fictional pasts for people is fun, sometimes; and the descriptions of the gecko's dreams are fun, sometimes; and the whimsical, slightly surrealist section titles are fun, sometimes; and the plays of memory and truth are fun, sometimes: but even the consistency of a sentence like this one is missing from Aqualusa's wandering, watery imagination.

He needs more force, more concentration. He needs to live in the novel he is trying to write. ( )

A delightful poetic book, and told by a witty, though rather unusual narrator, a gecko.

Set in Angola just after the civil war, the story unfolds in vignettes, seemingly unrelated at first -- recollections of his life now as a gecko and of his past as a man, his dreams, and observations of what goes on in the home of an albino, Felix, where he also lives (on the wall somewhere behind the bookshelves). Felix earns his living as a fabricator of pasts (the Portuguese title translates into Seller of Pasts) --- he is sought after, mainly by petty and ambitious politicians and newly successful businessmen, who think it necessary to be descended from aristocratic or venerable lineage. One day, a photojournalist comes and demands a fictitious lineage. Events unfold so that we see imaginary history enter into a collision course with present reality that has its roots in an enigmatic past, and without meaning to Felix enters the tableau he created and fact and fiction come together, and we are met with a rather unexpected climax.

It is with a delicate and clever touch that Agualusa, who won the Independent's Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007 for this, dealt with the themes of ambiguity of identity, and mutability of truth in this dream-like narrative. ( )

The Book of Chameleons has been widely and highly reviewed since it came out in English translation in 2006. At about 127 pages it can be read in a day or less but it contains many building blocks to keep one busy. There are philosophical and literary meditations. A spy plot. A love story. And some unique concepts like a narrator who is a lizard on the wall, or a man who sells invented pasts. Ultimately I found it somewhat unrewarding because many of allusions and places and events were unknown to me, and the central idea of invented histories didn't have enough space to be more fully explored. ( )

The narrator, a chameleon, allows us to witness the life of
a single middle aged man in whose house he lives, and whom earns his living by making up life stories to sell to those who need a new past. We are introduced to several characters related to him, in a short novel divided in very small chapters, beautifully written. Although brief, the novel is full of interesting ideas and very evocative descriptions. It is a real treat. ( )

A little gem of a novel, the Book of Chameleons unexpectedly features a gecko as narrator. Excellent novels seems to have time and poise. There is nothing hurried in this book, despite it finishing in fewer than two hundred pages. Even the dream sequences, often an ugly addition, are expertly incorporated. This is a book that explores memory, identity and the past. Much recommended, it is what Borges would have written had he tackled a full length novel (and had an editor who insisted on removing all literary references.) ( )

As the title of the book suggests, this book is about shifting identities. Felix Ventura has an interesting job – conjuring a new past for people who have a history that does not fit with their aspirations.

Agualusa has a deceptively simple style, and his book is filled with reality testing images and tangled histories. We learn much about the characters from a gecko living in the crevices of Ventura’s apartment. But even this shape-shifting narrator seems to have identity issues and has ‘other’ lives as a human – maybe even being an alter ego of Ventura.

I enjoyed the elegance of the writing and the twists and bends in and out of reality. It reads as thoughts and ideas rather than a plotted novel, and is necessarily odd. Despite the simplicity and brevity of the content, it demands a reread to review.

Recommended. ( )

The narrator of this book is a gecko, who lives in the house of an old man who makes a living selling fake upper-crust family backgrounds to self-made Angolan men and women. One of his clients is so taken with his new life that he sets off in search of the "mother" who never gave birth to him. Meanwhile, the gecko remembers his previous life as a human, and the old man reminisces about a childhood that may or may not have been his.

But - as the book asks - how valid is objective truth? Isn't something we believe we remember more significant than an event we have forgotten? Can't fiction and myth be more meaningful than reality? Shouldn't everyone be allowed to have their own truth, instead of being caged by mere facts?

Of course, real events have consequences of their own, and towards the end of the book, we are brought up short by an abrupt reminder that you can't always escape from your history, no matter how much you want to. But overall, the book celebrates people who create themselves - your past is vitally important to the person you are, so take control of it!

This is a wonderfully readable book, witty, perceptive, beautifully written, and full of significances that you spot the second time around. I had planned to quote the passage on the different sorts of light - but the last reviewer beat me to it. So I'll quote this, instead: "The foreigner ate with a glowing appetite, as though he weren't tasting the firm flesh of the snapper but its whole life, the years and years slipping between the sudden explosions of a shoal, the whirling of the waters, the thick strands of light that on sunny evenings fall straight down into the blue abyss." ( )

Very nice book with an unusual narrating character, the intensity of the story is managed through dreams experienced by the narrating character and "dialogues" with the other characters in the book.
Some interesting theories as well on finding anyone anywhere in a short timespan. I enjoyed this one from a, for me, unknown author. ( )

The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese, and winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction award is an odd little book, but an enjoyable one.

Narrated by a lizard (a gecko, not a chameleon - the chameleons of the title are pretty much everyone except the lizard), the novel is set in the house in Angola of Félix Ventura, an albino man abandoned at birth who, as an adult, specialises in providing false histories for people who want to add flourishes to their family histories (adding in distinguished ancestors, that sort of thing). Félix happily confides to the lizard, who freely roams the house, observing all who come and go but remaining himself pretty much unobtrusively in the background ... the perfect narrator.

To start with, the novel seems as if it is going to owe more to the magical realism of the likes of Borges and Marquez (who get referenced), as the gecko intersperses description of what is happening in Félix's life with dreams of his own past, when he was a man, prior to being reincarnated in his current form. However when a stranger comes to Félix asking him to invent a complete past and new fake identity for him, which he eventually agrees to for a significant chunk of cash, and then elements of that past seem to start coming true, things start to take a more concrete turn. By the novel's end, the plot turns on a brutal part of Angola's recent post-colonial history, and what is effectively a murder mystery plays out through the past and the present.

Agualusa (a nom de plume) plays with themes of memory and identity, and the novel loops in and around, in and out of itself, as Ventura and the gecko both begin to realise what is going on. Relatively short, but very readable, this is a deceptively complex book that I suspect would benefit from a rereading.

And the lizard is great. ( )