Mário Lúcio Sousa: "Let No Artist Try to Surpass the Creativity of a Dictator"

Cape Verdean writer Mário Lúcio Sousa is the author of the novel "Afrocalipse", which follows a fictional President inspired by the tricks and extravagances of various real dictators. According to the author himself, the work requires not invention but rather the ability to know how to tell stories, as real facts are sometimes so surreal that they forced him to suppress some degree of truth to make the events believable. Mário Lúcio Sousa states that no artist should try to surpass the creativity of a dictator, suggesting that the reality of authoritarian regimes is already, in itself, extraordinary and worthy of recounting. The novel uses as its motto a quotation that reflects this idea: "Let no artist try to surpass the creativity of a dictator".