Celebrated Angolan musician Faustino Manso has just died, leaving seven wives and eighteen children scattered across southern Africa. His youngest daughter, Laurentina, arrives in Angola from her home in Portugal to trace the story of the father she never knew.

A picaresque and evocative novel bearing witness to the Portuguese slave trade, and a meeting between an aristocrat and a former slave-girl said to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

Upon his death the Angolan composer Faustino Manso left seven widows and eighteen children. His youngest daughter, Laurentina, a filmmaker, tries to reconstruct the late musician's turbulent life.

A journalist - the autobiographical features are quite deliberate - is trying to find out what happened to Lidia, who disappeared in Luanda in 1992, a point in time when the civil war flared up again with ferocity after rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement refused to accept defeat in the country's first free and democratic elections.

The Book of Chameleons .