Tracing elusive wars: Reading war in Mia Couto’s Sleepwalking Land, Under the Frangipani and The Last Flight of the Flamingo

ABSTRACT

The article reads Mozambican author Mia Couto’s Sleepwalking Land, Under the Frangipani and The Last Flight of the Flamingo as a triptych. This reading is based on the understanding that each of the texts reference distinct, yet connected, moments along Mozambique’s journey from civil war to peace and reconstruction. It argues that in these texts, Couto is constantly trying to find new ways in which Mozambique’s wars can be written so the destruction they represent can be recuperated and a new Mozambique imagined. Central to this attempted recuperation is his textual return to the events of the civil war in texts that have specific post-war settings, thus allowing for the effects of that war to be reinterpreted according to socio-historical imperatives that have only become apparent in the years after the advent of peace.

KEYWORDS:

• Mozambique
• Mozambican literature
• Mia Couto
• war literature
• African literature

Note on contributor

Sean Rogers holds a PhD in African literature from the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the director of Know Africa Research Consultants (Pty) Ltd, a company that offers research, analysis and advisory services for those who do business in African countries.

Notes

1. The readings of Mia Couto's work that appear in this article reference it as it appears in English translation.

2. Mia Couto has won numerous literary awards, of which two stand out. In 2002, his first novel, Terra Sonâmbula (1992), was voted among the top 12 best African books of the 20^th century by an international panel at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and in 2007 he became the first African recipient of the Latin Union Award for Romantic Literature.