Whites Can Dance Too

Translated by Daniel Hahn

An exhilarating debut novel told through three different voices, Whites Can Dance Too is Kalaf Epalanga's reflection on and celebration of the music of his homeland, the intertwining of cultural roots, and freedom and love.

It took being caught at a border without proper documents for me to realise I'd always been a prisoner of sorts. Kuduro had been my passport to the world, thanks to it I'd travelled to places I'd never dreamed of visiting. But the chickens had come home to roost . . .

Whites Can Dance Tootells the story of Kalaf, an Angolan musician stopped at the Norwegian border on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. While in a holding cell awaiting interrogation, he considers the life he has led and the events that have brought him to his current-day situation.

His story is the story of a musical genre, kuduro, a blistering, high-energy form infused with social and political messages; of Sofia, a white Portuguese girl at the heart of the Lisbon dance scene who agrees to marry Kalaf to help him obtain a European passport; and of Viking, the Norwegian policeman haunted by a previous immigration case who holds Kalaf's fate in his hands and finds himself questioning his own livelihood following the rise of racism and prejudice in Norway.