The Modern Novel

Biography

Luis Cardoso was born in 1958 in Cailaco in East Timor. His father was a paramedic. He grew up speaking Tetum and learned Portuguese at school. He studied at a Jesuit seminary, where several members of Fretilin also studied. He went to Lisbon to study forestry management. One of his fellow students was the writer José Eduardo Agualusa. After qualifying in law, environmental politics and maths, he became the representative of the National Council of Maubere Resistance, a group set up to resist the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. (Maubere is the Tetum for peasant.) He campaigned in Spain, Portugal and Brazil for this group. His first novel was the first full-length novel by an East Timorese. He continued to work for East Timorese independence and to publish novels.

Other links

Luís Cardoso
Luís Cardoso (in Portuguese)
Luís Cardoso de Noronha (in Portuguese)
Luís Cardoso de Noronha (in Portuguese)
Luís Cardoso e a vivência da diáspora: nota sobre a literatura de Timor Leste (in Portuguese)