A great name in contemporary African Portuguese letters, Mia Couto writes for ” teach readers to dream “. Journalist, poet, novelist, columnist, storyteller, he is the author of a sumptuous and poetic work, rich in around thirty books. Her new novel, The Mapper of Absences, is inspired by the life of his father, who was also a journalist and poet and engaged in the fight against Portuguese colonization.
The Mozambican Mia Couto is inhabited by a deep sense of frustration. The writer has long imagined himself as Che Guevara of Mozambique, but today must be content with being only the Victor Hugo of his country or at best his Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Certainly prestigious names, but which have nothing to do with the revolutionary career of which he had once dreamed.
” At the time I was still a teenager, explains Couto. We lived in a colonial and openly racist society. I was revolted by the actions of the fascist regime in power. I dreamed of changing the world. Che Guevara was our great source of inspiration, even if his books were then banned in our regions. Victor Hugo did not enjoy the same prestige or epic appeal as the Cuban revolution. »
“A white man with an African soul”
Real name Antonio Emilio Leite Couto, Mia Couto was born in 1955 in Mozambique to Portuguese parents. ” He’s white, with an African soul “, says of him his friend and colleague Hennig Mankel. Entering literature in the 1980s, Mia Couto has become one of the most important figures of Portuguese-speaking letters in Africa. Winner of some of the most prestigious literary prizes, including the Camoes Prize in 2013 and the Neudstadt International Prize the following year, the man has to his credit some thirty books translated into 20 languages and shared between novels, chronicles , short stories and poems.
sleepy earth (1992), The Frangipani Veranda (2000), The Silence Tuner (2011), Emperor’s Sands (2020) are some of Mozambican’s best-known novels where the real sometimes becomes fantastic and magical, against a backdrop of immeasurable drama and tragedy.
A poet as much as a storyteller, Couto draws his inspiration from the Mozambican oral tradition. He revisits the history of the continent, never ceasing to auscultate the aftermath of the colonial wars in the Mozambican collective memory and in daily life, as we see in his new novel, The Mapper of Absences, which has just been published. This book looks back on the last years of Portuguese colonization in Mozambique, the atrocities and devastations, the secret police at work and the forbidden love between whites and blacks. To tell his descent into the darkness of war without peace, the novelist was inspired by the life of his father, as specified in the introductory note at the beginning of the novel.
” This is my most autobiographical novel, adds Couto. I talk about Beira, my hometown, in the heart of Mozambique where I grew up. However, when I returned to the places of my childhood, I very quickly realized that it was not so much the places in themselves that I wanted to find, but rather the emotion still attached to these places. I also realized how much my father’s presence was still alive in these places. He has been my guide on my wanderings through the past. »
Salazar, Frelimo and writing
Mia Couto’s father was a journalist and poet. He serves as a model for the novel’s protagonist. Atheist poet and communist, Fernando Leite Couto had opposed the fascist regime of dictator Salazar and had to flee Portugal with his wife in the 1950s. The couple had gone into exile in Mozambique where Mia Couto and her siblings were born .
” My father had fought for the independence of Mozambique, which he considered inevitable, and he taught us to love this country “says the writer. Mission obviously successful, since at sixteen years old, young Mia joined the ranks of Frelimo and campaigned for the liberation of the country. He was in charge, for a time, of directing the newspaper of the revolutionary party, Noticias. According to legend, it was by going to do reports in remote corners of the country that he took a liking to writing and embarked on a literary career. With the success that we know.
When the author is asked to confirm the legend that surrounds his coming to writing, he puts forward another explanation, more personal, more in line with his personality, all in modesty and self-criticism. ” It’s probably because I’m a man who failed that I became a writerhe says. Already, as a young boy, I was bad at school, unlike my brothers who always came back with excellent results. My parents often wondered, heaving long sighs, what I was going to become. In fact, it is when nothing works for us that we try to make our own way. »
A path that necessarily passes through imagination and writing, when it comes to Mia Couto. In the second part of this chronicle to listen to next Saturday, we will dwell precisely on the autofictional imagination and the poetic writing which make the success of the Absence Mapperthe opus of a master at the height of his art.
The Mapper of Absences, by Mia Couto. Translated from Portuguese by Elisabeth Monteiro Rodrigues. Editions Métailié, 347 pages, 22.80 euros.