Translated from Portuguese by Peter Bush
Published by Bloomsbury Press, 2008, 396 pages. Original version published in 2003.

It is a rainy morning in December 1905, and Luís Bernardo Valença is on a train from Lisbon to Vila Viçosa: he has been summoned by the King of Portugal. He has no idea why the King wants to see him.

Luís is 37, a law graduate who now owns a small shipping company in Lisbon. He has a good life—he makes a decent living, enjoys the culture that Lisbon offers him, and takes an interest in the news and politics. He has written articles for newspapers on issues on which he feels strongly, such as slavery.

It is these articles that get him noticed. Portugal is a major producer of cocoa, grown on the Portuguese colony of São Tomé and Príncipe, and the British are a major buyer of this cocoa. But recently the British have accused the Portuguese of using slave labour on the plantations and have threatened to stop buying cocoa unless the Portuguese can demonstrate that this is no longer the case. The British will be appointing a consul to São Tomé in June 1906. The colony, is for the moment, without a governor, and the King needs to appoint someone who can get there well before the British consul to iron out any issues—in other words, make sure that slavery does not exist, or at least that the British consul cannot find evidence of it. Luís, with his youth and strong feelings about slavery, seems to be the ideal candidate.

However, Luís does not really want to take up the offer. But how do you refuse a king? It seems as if events are conspiring to push him to go. A friend offers to buy his shipping company for a very generous price. Luís gets embroiled with a married woman and needs to put some distance between them. Added to this, his best friend João persuades him to go. So Luís accepts, aware that he will be going to a distant part of the world, far away from his friends and all that is familiar.

“His decision to go had not been sudden or impulsive. On the contrary, it had been gradual, imperceptible, as if deep down, from the very beginning, from that afternoon in Vila Viçosa, his destiny had eluded his grasp and his will was no longer his to control. He sensed he’d been caught in an ambush, everyone set on rushing him to his impending fate…”

Once he gets to São Tomé, he begins to realize that slavery is still being practiced. Labourers are being brought over from Angola, another Portuguese colony. They are provided with food and hospitals, but work in conditions that no Portuguese would agree to. Theoretically, the Angolans have the freedom to return home when their contracts expire, but oddly enough, almost none do.

Luís makes his position clear, which does not make him popular with the Portuguese on the islands. The plantation owners or managers will have to ensure that their labourers have decent working conditions. He makes it a point to defend the Blacks, is not afraid of standing up to the Portuguese and—this is even more unforgivable—becomes close friends with the new British Consul David Jameson and his wife Ann, the only people with whom he feels he has something in common. His other friend is Sebastião, the head of his domestic staff, whom he trusts more than his countrymen.

Trouble is brewing. Luís falls deeply in love with Ann, and they have an affair, an affair that feels as inevitable as his decision to come to São Tomé. Luís is torn apart by the guilt of betraying his friend. Ann seems to have fallen in love with him too, but she is also carrying a lot of resentment against David, who lost a shining career in India because of his gambling.

Gradually, Luís’s position on the islands becomes untenable. He has made a lot of enemies, men who do not forgive easily. Meanwhile, the King is planning a visit to the colonies, and a slave rebellion is brewing on Príncipe. Will Luís be able to deal with all the challenges thrown at him?

Equator is an interesting look at the colonial history of São Tomé and Príncipe, and the politics that played out between the Portuguese and the British. Luís and David, although close friends, have to look out for the interests of their respective countries. Like David, Luís deplores slavery, but this earns him the hostility of most of the Portuguese on the islands, people who refuse to change their ways, even though Luís tries to persuade them that it would be in their best interest.

Miguel Sousa Tavares is scathing about the attitude of the Portuguese in the colonies, not just in São Tomé but also in Angola. Like colonial administrations all over the world, they only cared for what they could get out of the colony—the welfare of its people was fairly low on their list of priorities. Putting someone like Luís into a such a milieu throws this into relief.

There is a chapter on David’s time in India, which, although it fills out his and Ann’s back story, could have been shorter. I was far more interested in what was happening in São Tomé.

Sousa Tavares shines a light on a part of the world—and history—that is not very well-known, at least in the Anglophone world. He has clearly researched his subject well, and writes vividly about it.  This is a book worth reading.