‘One of the greatest living writers in the Portuguese language.’—Philip Graham, The Millions
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 sertão, 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.
Table of Content
The Frontier of Culture
Our Poor Rich People
A Word of Advice and Some Advice Without Words
What Africa Does the African Writer Write About?
The Fly or the Spider?
Citizenship in Search of Its City
The Brazilian
Sertão in the Mozambican Savannah
Animal Conservation: A Noah-less Ark?
Waters of My Beginning
Languages We Don’t Know We Know
The Seven Dirty Shoes
Dreaming of Home
Travelling Fire Raisers
The Planet of Frayed Socks
Half a Future
Baring One’s Voice
What if Obama Were African?
Nutmegged by a Verse
The Waters of Biodiversity
As if the Sea Had Another Shore
The China Within Us
The City on the Veranda of Time
Mozambique: 25 Years
A Sea of Exchange, an Ocean of Myths
The Sweet Containment of
Sura
Land of Water and Rain
Flying Places
A Boat in the Sky over Munhava
About the author
Mia Couto, an environmental biologist from Mozambique, is the author of 25 books of fiction, essays and poems in his native Portuguese. Couto’s novels and short story collections have been translated into 20 languages. Two of his novels have been made into feature films. His work has been awarded important literary prizes in Mozambique, South Africa, Portugal, Italy and Brazil. His books have been bestsellers in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Six of Couto’s books have been translated into English in the United Kingdom: two short story collections by Heinemann and four novels by Serpent’s Tail. In 2007 he was the first African author to win the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages; in 2013 he was awarded the €100, 000 Camões Prize for Literature, in recognition of his life’s work. In 2014 he received the $50, 000 Neustadt Prize for Literature, administered by
World Literature Today.
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