Guilherme de Melo (1931 in Lourenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique – 29 June 2013 in Lisbon) was a Portuguese journalist, novelist, and activist.^[1][2] Melo lived through the protracted war of independence in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique in the 1960s and 1970s. Openly gay himself,^[3] Melo's novel The Shadow of the Days (A Sombra dos Dias) is an account of growing up gay in the privileged environment of a white family in colonial Mozambique before the outbreak of war and of being openly gay against the background of an increasingly bitter anti-colonial war. After the Carnation Revolution and the independence of Mozambique in 1975, Melo went to Portugal.^[2]

Other titles: Ainda Havia Sol (The Sun was still Shining), O Homem que Odiava a Chuva (The Man who Hated Rain), As Vidas de Elisa Antunes (The Lives of Elisa Antunes), O que Houver de Morrer (He who will have to Die) and Como um Rio sem Pontes (Like a Bridgeless River).

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