Untranslatable Subalternity and Historicizing Empire’s Enjoyment in Luís Cardoso’s Requiem para o Navegador Solitário

This chapter follows up on Sylvan’s expository indictment of Empire’s monologicism with an exploration of contemporary East Timorese writer Luís Cardoso’s contributions to decolonial tropes of movement and the making of meaning. Following a brief overview of Cardoso’s larger oeuvre, the chapter examines his 2007 novel, Requiem para o Navegador Solitário [Requiem for the Solitary Sailor], particularly the actions and experiences of its narrator, known only as Catarina. As a teenage girl, born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, to a Chinese father and Batavian mother, her arranged marriage to a Portuguese port administrator of Dili leads her to move to the then colonial capital of Portuguese Timor. Taking place between the mid-1930s up to the Japanese invasion of the island of Timor during World War II in 1941, Catarina is ensnared by imperial actions both local and global.