Km 17 - Ruy Duarte de Carvalho

Who Was Ruy Duarte de Carvalho

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was born in Santarém, Portugal, in 1941, but spent his childhood and adolescence in southern Angola, accompanying his father, a Portuguese adventurer and elephant hunter, on his journeys through the Namibe Desert.
Trained as an agricultural regent, he was a breeder of Karakul sheep. He later studied cinema in London and anthropology in Paris. He earned a PhD in Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris.
While completing his doctorate with a thesis on the fishermen of Luanda Island, he became a university professor, lecturing at the University of Luanda, and later serving as a Visiting Professor at the University of Coimbra and the University of São Paulo.
In 1982, he carried out a pioneering exercise in the translation and appropriation of the great oral lyrical tradition in various African indigenous languages, which he brought together in Ondula Savana Branca. A reference author in the Portuguese language, he published, among other works, Vou lá visitar pastores in 1999, about the Kuvale, a pastoral society in southwestern Angola.
In poetry, notable works include Chão de Oferta (1972), A Decisão da Idade (1976), Observação Directa (2000), among others, having gathered poems from 1970 to 2000 in Lavra.
He was also the author of works of fiction, such as Como se o mundo não tivesse Leste (1977 and 2003), Vou lá visitar pastores (1999), a vast fresco about the Kuvale, a pastoral society in southwestern Angola adapted for cinema, and Os Papéis do Inglês (2000).
In addition to his literary activity, he directed the feature films Nelisita: narrativas nyaneka (1982) and Moia: o recado das ilhas (1989). A profound connoisseur of traditional agro-pastoral practices, he situated the setting of his research in the Kuvale ethnocultural region, in the south of the country, both as a filmmaker and as an anthropologist.
He received the Casino da Póvoa Literary Prize with Desmedida - Luanda, São Paulo, São Francisco e volta (2008). Also in 2008, the Belém Cultural Center held a cycle dedicated to his life and work, the first ever devoted to a Portuguese-language author.
In 2010, he was living in Swakopmund, Namibia, where he passed away at the age of 69.