Mia Couto or the Art of Storytelling

Abstract

Abstract: Although a great deal has by now been written about Mia Couto, the key to his exceptional success remains largely unexplained. Why should he appeal so widely, especially to those readers who know little or nothing about Mozambique? What can such readership find in a prose so replete with “Mozambicanisms” and so heavily accented by an invented language? Couto started his literary journey as a poet and he has written novels as well as a number of plays, but this article focuses on his short stories, or contos, for it is in the short stories that Couto achieves the greatest degree of literary originality, exhibits the most notable poetry, creates the most imaginative language, and reveals the most acute psychological insights. The article examines in its appropriate chronology the whole of Mia Couto’s corpus of short stories, with a view to assessing their literary qualities. The aim is both to explain why the author excels in a genre not so widely practised and to illustrate the manner in which language is related to theme within a very specific African context.