Portuguese Language, African Soul: The Case of Mia Couto

The fusion of European Portuguese & Mozambican African elements is held to be the principal characteristic of the Portuguese writings of Antonio Maria Leite Couto, better known as Mia Couto, who was born in 1955 in Mozambique as the son of European colonists & elected to remain in his African homeland when colonists were repatriated to Portugal. Characters in Mia Couto's novels personify various dimensions of the interaction between Europeans & Africans, both conflict & the dismantling of barriers; the latter theme extends to other barriers, eg, that between the living & the dead. Liberal use of terms unknown to European readers motivates Mia Couto to append glossaries with cultural explanations to most of his novels. 20 References. Adapted from the source document