The Book of Chameleons

The Book of Chameleons is a 2004 novel by Jose Eduardo Agualusa, originally published in Portuguese in 2004 under the title The Seller of Pasts and translated into English in 2006. Agualusa uses some of the tropes and tricks of magical realism to tell a looping, circular story that interrogates the nature of truth, the power of storytelling (a form of lying), and how both inform our identities.

A nameless narrator describes having grown up in the house he is now in, and his nightly ritual watching the skies. A man named Felix Ventura comes home and catches the narrator laughing and is amazed; the narrator describes Felix as an albino and reveals a grudging affection for the man. Felix begins joining the narrator each night to watch the sunset with him. The narrator describes the women that Felix brings home some nights.

It is revealed that the narrator is in fact a gecko named Eulálio, a small lizard living in Felix’s apartment, and that Felix makes his living as both an antique book dealer and by creating better pasts for people. They live in Angola, a former Portuguese colony that was torn apart by a bloody civil war, and many people come to Felix to have their actions during the war made to seem more noble, or less terrible, with creative modifications. Felix regards the gecko as his best friend and talks to him constantly about his work and his life. Eulálio reveals that he was once a man and has been reincarnated as a lizard.



A dream sequence reveals that Felix and the gecko often share dreams, and in these dreams the lizard can communicate directly with Felix. In the first dream, Eulálio remembers walking in a crowded city and shaking hands with people. In subsequent dreams the question of whether Eulálio is truly remembering his past lives or if Felix is supplying the lizard with a past as he does with his human clients is raised; Felix’s obvious affection for his pet may have inspired him to create a past for it.

Eulálio describes an encounter with a scorpion in which he barely escapes. Soon a new client arrives, a man who introduces himself as a photojournalist but who gives no name, saying that he has had many names but now he wishes Felix to not just improve his past, but to create a whole new past for him. Felix reluctantly agrees, and creates not just a history but also fake documents, giving the man the name José Bachmann.

Eulálio tells us that Bachmann becomes obsessed with his new identity. His accent changes to match the past Felix has created, and he begins to dress like a native Angolan. Bachmann then begins traveling extensively, going to the places that Felix used in his fake history—but finding evidence that José Bachmann actually existed, and that every detail Felix created is true and actually happened. This is very disturbing to Felix. In a dream, Eulálio and Felix discuss José and Felix describes what he does as an “advanced form of literature” in which he creates realities.



Felix meets a woman named Ângela Luciá and the two begin a romance. Luciá introduces Felix to a man called Edmundo Barata dos Reis, described as an “ex-agent of the Ministry of State Security.” Felix recognizes him as a homeless man who has been seen living in the sewers. When José sees dos Reis he recognizes him as the man who tortured him during the civil war and kidnapped his daughter, and there is a violent altercation in Felix’s home as the two men battle despite the fact that Felix is somewhat certain he has invented Bachmann’s past entirely.

The final chapter is revealed to be a diary entry by Felix, in which he describes finding Eulálio dead, the scorpion between his teeth, having died fighting the creature like a hero. Felix is saddened to have lost his pet and friend, and buries him gently in the backyard under a tree, on the shady side. He wonders if he will get to see the lizard in his dreams again, and questions whether any of the events or people from the story actually existed. An epigram from the magical realist writer Jorge Luis Borges in which the famous writer expresses a wish to be reincarnated as something “completely different” implies the possibility that Eulálio was in fact a reincarnation of Borges.

Agualusa uses magical realism to tell a story in which the violence and bloodshed of a civil war is glossed over with fictions and false identities which then become real and deadly as the hidden violence bursts through. Each of the characters in the story molt and change—like chameleons—as they take on new realities like protective coloring, but cannot escape the violence of their shared past.