Mia Couto - Böcker

Diogo Santiago is a celebrated Mozambican poet and intellectual, a well-known professor at the university in his country’s capital. In 2019, on the eve of a cyclone that will devastate the East African coast, he returns to his hometown of Beira to receive a tribute from his fellow citizens. As he travels across Mozambique, his mind returns to the past - to his own upbringing, and to the history of his country when it was still a Portuguese colony.Diogo’s father, himself a poet and a journalist, observed a terrible massacre committed during the waning days of the Estado Novo and was imprisoned by the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police. Diogo’s reflections on his father’s life are interspersed with found documents - letters, stories, entries in the journal kept by the PIDE agent who oversaw the case. As Cyclone Idai approaches Beira, threatening to wipe away the physical traces of the world in which he grew up, Diogo is forced to confront the impermanence of his own memories, too.A haunting novel of historical witness, The Cartographer of Absences is one of Mia Couto’s finest works. Drawing on the author’s own life in colonial Mozambique, this book is a significant new entry in the world literature canon.

Southern Mozambique, 1894. Sergeant Germano de Melo is posted to the village of Nkokolani to oversee the Portuguese conquest of territory claimed by Ngungunyane, the last of the leaders of the state of Gaza, the second-largest empire led by an African. Ngungunyane has raised an army to resist colonial rule and with his warriors is slowly approaching the border village. Desperate for help, Germano enlists Imani, a fifteen-year-old girl, to act as his interpreter. She belongs to the VaChopi tribe, one of the few who dared side with the Portuguese. But while one of her brothers fights for the Crown of Portugal, the other has chosen the African emperor. Standing astride two kingdoms, Imani is drawn to Germano, just as he is drawn to her. But she knows that in a country haunted by violence, the only way out for a woman is to go unnoticed, as if made of shadows or ashes. Alternating between the voices of Imani and Germano, Mia Couto’s Woman of the Ashes combines vivid folkloric prose with extensive historical research to give a spell binding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Gaza province of Mozambique is drowning in a torrent of war. Imani, a fifteen-year-old girl, struggles with her cultural identity as she is torn between her VaChopi roots and the occupying Portuguese. Her life becomes further fractured as her family is broken apart amid the conflict. Germano, a sergeant wrestling with guilt and grandeur, attempts to subdue one of the last African kingdoms, but meanwhile falls in love with Imani and loses himself to an infectious madness. In this vivid and enchanting novel, Mia Couto masterfully interweaves history with folklore and has managed to create a work of rare originality and imagination.

BY THE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE THE WINNER OF THE 2014 NEUSTADT PRIZE AND THE WINNER OF THE 2013 CAMOES PRIZE "One of the greatest living writers in the Portuguese language."--Philip Graham, The Millions "Subtle and elegant."--The Wall Street Journal "At once deadpan and beguiling."--The Times Literary Supplement "To understand what makes Antonio 'Mia' Emilio Leite Couto special--even extraordinary--we have to loosen our grip on the binary that distinguishes between 'the West' and 'Africa.' Couto is 'white' without not being African, and as an 'African' writer he's one of the most important figures in a global Lusophone literature that stretches across three continents."--The New Inquiry What would Barack Obama's 2004 campaign have looked like if it unfolded in an African nation? What does it mean to be an African writer today? How do writers and poets from all continents teach us to cross the sertao, the savannah, the barren places where we're forced to walk within ourselves?Bringing together the best pieces from his previously untranslated nonfiction collections, alongside new material presented here for the first time in any language, Pensativities offers English readers a taste of Mia Couto as essayist, lecturer, and journalist--with essays on cosmopolitanism, poverty, culture gaps, conservation, and more.

After the war, I thought all that was left was ashes, hollow ruins . . . Today, I know that’s not true. Where man remains, a seed, too, survives, a dream to inseminate time.Published in the aftermath of Mozambique’s bloody civil war, Mia Couto’s third collection seeks out the places violence could not reach, the places where, the author writes, “every man is the same: pretending he’s here, dreaming of going away, and plotting his return.” Shifting masterfully between forms—creation tale to meditation, playful comedy to magical twist—these stories grapple with questions of what’s been lost and what can be reclaimed, what future exists for a country that broke the yoke of colonialism only to descend into internecine war, what is Mozambican and what is Mozambique. Following fishermen and fortune-tellers, widows and drunks, and one errant hippopotamus, this new translation of stories by the Man Booker-listed author of Confession of the Lioness rediscovers possibility and what it means to be reborn.style="text-align: left;">Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prizestyle="text-align: left;">Winner of the Neustadt Prize for Literature, 2014style="text-align: left;">Winner of the Camões Prize for Literature, 2013A Vanity Fair Must-Read Book From Around The World for Winter 2019A Financial Times Summer Book of 2019

An NPR Best Book of 2021New and selected fiction, over half in English for the first time, from the winner of the 2014 Neustadt Prize.Known internationally for his novels, Neustadt Prize-winner Mia Couto first became famous for his short stories. Sea Loves Me includes sixty-four of his best, thirty-six of which appear in English for the first time. Covering the entire arc of Couto's career, this collection displays the Mozambican author's inventiveness, sensitivity, and social range with greater richness than any previous collection—from early stories that reflect the harshness of life under Portuguese colonialism; to magical tales of rural Africa; to contemporary fables of the fluidity of race and gender, environmental disaster, and the clash between the countryside and the city. The title novella, long acclaimed as one of Couto's best works but never before available in English, caps this collection with the lyrical story of a search for a lost father that leads unexpectedly to love.

Mozambique, 1895. The last days of the so-called Gaza Empire. After an attack on his quarters, defeated sergeant Germano de Melo is taken by his bright, young love Imani to the only hospital within reach an arduous river journey. Meanwhile, war rages all around: Emperor Ngugunyane's warriors fight the Portuguese occupiers with swords and spears, until the arrival of the machine gun ensures European domination.

Set against the backdrop of the war between the Kingdom of Gaza, one of the last great pre-colonial African kingdoms, and the Portuguese colonialists, a young African woman Imani and the Portuguese sergeant Germano de Melo have shared an unexpected love. While Germano is left behind in Africa, serving with the Portuguese military, Imani is enlisted to serve as interpreter to the imprisoned emperor of Gaza, Ngungunyane, on the long voyage to Lisbon. For Ngungunyane and his seven wives, it will be a journey of no return. Whereas Imani will come back only after a decade-long odyssey through the Portuguese empire at the turn of the nineteenth century. In the third novel of his acclaimed Sands of the Emperor trilogy, Couto supplies a voice to those silenced by the horrors of colonialism. As he depicts the beauty and terror of war and love, and reveals the devastation of a profoundly unequal clash of cultures, he gives a uniquely personal voice to a little-known period of history.

A RADIO FRANCE-CULTURE/TELERAMA BEST WORK OF FICTION BY THE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE THE WINNER OF THE 2014 NEUSTADT PRIZE AND THE WINNER OF THE 2013 CAMOES PRIZE "Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa."--Doris Lessing "By meshing the richness of African beliefs ...into the Western framework of the novel, he creates a mysterious and surreal epic."--Henning Mankell Mwanito was eleven when he saw a woman for the first time, and the sight so surprised him he burst into tears. Mwanito has been living in a former big-game park for eight years. The only people he knows are his father, his brother, an uncle, and a servant. He's been told that the rest of the world is dead, that all roads are sad, that they wait for an apology from God. In the place his father calls Jezoosalem, Mwanito has been told that crying and praying are the same thing. Both, it seems, are forbidden. The eighth novel by the internationally bestselling Mia Couto, The Tuner of Silences is the story of Mwanito's struggle to reconstruct a family history that his father is unable to discuss.With the young woman's arrival in Jezoosalem, however, the silence of the past quickly breaks down, and both his father's story and the world are heard once more. The Tuner of Silences has been published to acclaim in more than half a dozen countries. Now in its first English translation, this story of an African boy's quest for the truth endures as a magical, humanizing confrontation between one child and the legacy of war. PRAISE FOR MIA COUTO "On almost every page ...we sense Couto's delight in those places where language slips officialdom's asphyxiating grasp."--The New York Times "Even in translation, his prose is suffused with striking images."--The Washington Post PRAISE FOR DAVID BROOKSHAW "David Brookshaw dexterously renders the novel's often colloquial, pithy Portuguese into lively English. Brookshaw's task is made more exacting by the particular quality of Couto's brilliance."--The New York Times

Sebastião Salgado is one the most respected photojournalists working today, his reputation forged by decades of dedication and powerful black-and-white images of dispossessed and distressed people, taken in places where most wouldn’t dare to go. Although he has photographed throughout South America and around the globe, his work most heavily concentrates on Africa, where he has shot more than 40 reportage works over a period of 30 years. From the Dinka tribes in Sudan and the Himba in Namibia to gorillas and volcanoes in the lakes region to displaced peoples throughout the continent, Salgado shows us all facets of African life today. Whether he’s documenting refugees or vast landscapes, Salgado knows exactly how to grab the essence of a moment so that when one sees his images one is involuntarily drawn into them. His images artfully teach us the disastrous effects of war, poverty, disease, and hostile climatic conditions.This book brings together Salgado’s photos of Africa in three parts. The first concentrates on the southern part of the continent (Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia), the second on the Great Lakes region (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya), and the third on the Sub-Saharan region (Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Ethiopia). Texts are provided by renowned Mozambique novelist Mia Couto, who describes how today’s Africa reflects the effects of colonization as well as the consequences of economic, social, and environmental crises.This stunning book is not only a sweeping document of Africa but an homage to the continent’s history, people, and natural phenomena.

Ömsint skildring av människans oförmåga att hantera livet av Mia Couto, en av den afrikanska litteraturens stora mästare, nominerad till The Man Booker Prize 2015. Silvestre Vitalício flyr från storstaden med sina båda söner, en tjänare samt åsnan Jezibel till en gudsförgäten plats långt ut i ödemarken. De slår sig ner i en gammal jaktstation och där grundar Silvestre sitt rike som han ger namnet Jesusalem. Enligt Silvestre har resten av världen gått under och det finns inget annat än deras Jesusalem, de är de enda överlevande människorna. Men i själva verket bär Silvestre på en fruktansvärd hemlighet och har flytt för att komma undan sitt förflutna. En dag kommer överraskande en främling portugisiskan Marta till Jesusalem och i och med detta hotas ordningen i Silvestres lilla kungadöme. Samtidigt börjar omvärlden bryskt och obönhörligt att tränga sig på. Mia Couto skildrar med ömhet och förståelse en människas oförmåga att uthärda livet. Hur förtvivlan kan övergå i rasande galenskap. Jesusalem är en komplex och fängslande roman med en mycket originell och poetisk stil. Mia Couto är född 1955 i Beira, Mocambique. Han har skrivit ett ertal romaner och anses vara en av de främsta författarna från det portugisspråkiga Afrika. Fyra romaner är översatta till svenska varav den senaste, Sjöjungfruns andra fot, utkom 2009.