Description
Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize
Winner of the 2014 Neustadt Prize
Winner of the 2013 Camoes Prize
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.
“Mia Couto’s words help weave the story of Mozambique. Couto’s language is enriched by his country’s idioms, voices—and possibilities.”—New York Times
“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
“Remarkable … If his recent Neustadt Prize is any indication, [Couto] is a presumptive Nobel Prize-winning writer that we … should be reading.”—National Post
“To understand what makes António ‘Mia’ Emílio 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
“If there is an overarching drive that threads the collection together, it’s Couto’s commitment to recognize history’s numerous flaws, and to use this history to embrace a diverse future, full of ‘hybridities’ of both self and cultural environs … A fine writer who deserves a wide North American audience … [Couto] is a constant witness to a country—flush with nouveau riche and mass poverty—trying to figure out its place in both Africa and the world.”—Numéro Cinq
“[Having] helped birth … the global literary scene’s love affair with African fiction, Couto is a polymath who not only sustains a lively scientific career but is also a former political activist once deeply involved in the fight for his country’s independence.”—OZY
