Ethale Publishing

A publishing house that promotes African narratives

A few years ago, a Congolese filmmaker came to Maputo to make a documentary about the city, filming Avenida Vladimir Lenine. He thought that that avenue represented all the idiosyncrasies of the entire country’s history, from the 33 Floors building to the informal market in Xiquelene. The documentary never saw the light of day, the director left and the avenue was left to live its usual life.

People carriers, cars, people and shops of all kinds, clothes, grocery stores, cafes. Nobody would have bet on opening a bookstore because, as you know, the book business is not profitable. But it’s a good thing that there are courageous and visionaries in this world: two young people embarked on an adventure and opened the Ethale bookstore, on Avenida Vladimir Lenine, 2195, the offspring of publishing house Ethale (“tale, story, narrative” in Emakhuwa).

The publisher Ethale, in turn, is the offspring of the Festival “Fim do Caminho”, that from 2014 to 2017 took place in Mossuril and the Island of Mozambique. A Film and Literature Festival, held by three young people, Alex Macbeth, Anna Di Giola and Jessemusse Cacinda. They took writers, debates and ideas about Africanity, diversity, creativity and imagination, for three years. Rich years of experiences, learning and bitter surprises too. Like when they announced 6 books of African classics translated into Portuguese for the prize in the literary competition on detective stories. There was nothing like that on the market. Few translated authors. No circulation of African narratives in Africa. In addition, many participated in the contest and presented detective stories. The jury selected 15 of them to be published. Then came the idea of founding a publishing house. With it, they had to learn quickly to overcome the immense difficulties of the book industry.

“A few days later, Ethale Publishing was born with a double mission: to publish new voices in Mozambique and, on the other hand, to translate classic African fiction into Portuguese – says Alex Macbeth – both would be an investment in African narratives. We established a company and in June 2017 we debuted with our criminal anthology, O Hambúrguer Que Matou o Jorge.

Ethale is now a growing reality in the global arena, across multiple channels, thanks to new technologies.

In September 2021, the publisher participated, in partnership with the Moleskine Foundation, in the AfroCuration event in Mozambique as part of the WikiAfrica Education Initiative: more than 70 young volunteers learned to create and edit the first Wikipedia articles in the Emakhuwa language.

Ethale has translated and published A Morte e o Cavaleiro do Rei, by Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, also A Greve dos Mendigos, by Aminata Sow Fall, and Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Bem-vindo, Welcome, Karibu on Avenida Vladimir Lenine

 “We are a publishing house dedicated to promoting African narratives. Our vision of Africanity goes beyond physical and geographic space. It is above all a cultural and philosophical notion – Jessemusse Cacinda explains – we consider African not only those who have an identity card that connects them to an African country, but those who live African cultures and take them into account to build their worldviews.”

“We had no idea what we were doing or what we should be doing: we only knew that we had to face the shortage of books in the country – Alex Macbeth comments. Five years, 15 books and several collaborations later, we are launching a trilingual app for African books, the Ethale Books App live on the Google Play Store, the first digital platform for e-books in Mozambique.”

What will the Congolese director say the next time he comes to Maputo?

Issue 72 Mar/Apr | Download.