"Terra Sonâmbula": Manifestações de uma "Odisséia" Africana no Moçambique Pós-Independência

Abstract

Abstract: This essay focuses on Mia Couto’s first novel, Terra Sonâmbula (1992) and, specifically, his incorporation of the epic genre from Western literature into the cultural milieu of post-colonial Mozambique. Ana Mafalda Leite, in her study of epic discursivity in African literature, A Modalização Épica nas Literaturas Africanas, establishes significant structural parallels between the orality of Homer’s epics and the predominant oral tradition to be found in pre-independence Lusophone African literature. The cornerstone of her thesis lies in her argument that the epic model functioned as an important paradigm in the literature of such Portuguese colonies as Angola and Mozambique which, in their struggle for autonomy, were necessarily engaged in the process of constructing a national identity. Since its independence in 1975 until 1992, Mozambique was mired in a drawn-out civil war that drained the natural and human resources of that country. It is within this context that Mia Couto introduces his protagonists in Terra Sonâmbula, portraying the journey of an elderly man and a young boy fleeing from a refugee camp in Mozambique. By utilizing parallel episodes of Homer’s Odyssey, this study illustrates those epic characteristics in Terra Sonâmbula that reveal the ongoing search for both a cultural and a national identity in war-torn, post-colonial Mozambique.