Mia Couto

Mia Couto ( António Leite Emilio Couto, born July 5, 1955 in Beira, Mozambique ) is a Mozambican writer. His stage name Mia comes from his brother, who as a small child the name " Emilio " could not pronounce. The author acknowledges the name to his passion for cats.

Life

Mia Couto was born as the second son of coming from Portugal Maria de Jesus and Fernando Leite Couto. His older brother Fernando Couto is now Amado veterinarian, his younger brother Jorge Armando Couto works as a lawyer. All three live in Mozambique, while their parents have returned to Portugal.

According to own statements Mia Couto grew up in two cultures.

" Em casa era Europe Portugal e na rua era África. (Translation: " home was Portugal and Europe, on the street Africa ") ".

Besides Portuguese, he also speaks the Bantu language Chissena.

With the start of the study in 1971 at the Medical Faculty of the University of Lourenço Marques in the then Couto began his journalistic activities. He was involved in the student environment in the Liga dos Estudantes Moçambicanos Anti- Imperial Followings ( Lema ) and sympathized with the Marxist resistance movement FRELIMO. In the wake of the Carnation Revolution, he abandoned his studies and devoted himself entirely to journalism for a year. He first worked for the led by Rui Knopfli Tribuna. Following riots in the capital Couto returned to his home town of Beira. In 1976 he was appointed at the age of 21 years as director of the State news agency Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM ). Until 1981 he was also chief editor of the largest daily newspaper in the country pace. Following this, he directed until 1985, the weekly newspaper Notícias.

1985 turned away from Mia Couto from journalism and began in Maputo a biology degree. Today he is a professor at the University Biology and directs a company he founded. He sees himself primarily as a biologist and not as a writer. During his field research, he interviewed the inhabitants of the hinterland, serve their stories and myths as the foundation for his literary activity.

In 1991, together with Couto Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa the National Prize for Tales of the Mozambican Writers' Association AEMO. 1995 his novel Terra Sonambula was as most read book in Brazil by the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte ( APCA ) Award, and in 2007 by the Portuguese director Teresa Prata filmed (see Terra Sonambula ). On August 27, 1998 Mia Couto became the first Portuguese-speaking writers of Africa in the Academia Brasileira de Letras. For his 2012 novel, A Confissão Leoa as he received the 2013 Prémio Camões. On November 1, 2013 World Literature Today announced the award of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in Mia Couto as the winner of the year 2014.

Mia Couto was married four times and has three children.

Work

The works of Mia Couto are heavily influenced by Brazilian authors such as João Cabral de Melo Neto, Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and João Guimarães Rosa, but also by Portuguese writers such as Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Eugénio de Andrade, Eugénio de Lisboa and Fernando Pessoa affected. Characteristic of his stories is the contextual proximity to Latin American magic realism, as well as his numerous neologisms. A typical example is the " Estórias Abensonhadas ," a combination of the existing terms " Estórias " ( story / narrative) and " abensonhada " ( mixture of "blessed" - abençoado and " dreamed " - sonhado ).

Bibliography

• Raiz de Orvalho. ( Poetry, 1983)
• Vozes Anoitecidas. ( Short stories, 1986)
• Cada Homem é uma Raça. ( Short stories, 1990)
• Cronicando. (political Chronicle, 1988)
• Terra Sonambula. (Novel, 1992) dt: The sleepwalking country. dipa, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7638-0334-3.
• Estórias Abensonhadas. ( Short stories, 1994)
• A Varanda do Frangipani. (Novel, 1996) dt: Under the frangipani tree. Reprint, Union Verlag, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-293-20404-1.
• Contos do nascer da Terra. ( Short stories, 1997)
• Mar me cross. (Novel, 1998; contribution to Mozambique's pavilion at the Expo 98 in Lisbon )
• Vinte e Zinco. ( Story 1999)
• O último voo do flamingo. (Novel, 2000)
• O Gato e o Escuro. ( Children's book, 2001)
• Well Berma de No kite estrada e outros contos. (Stories, 2001)
• To rio chamado tempo, uma casa chamada terra. (Novel, 2002)
• Contos do nascer da terra. ( Short stories, 2002)
• O país do Queixa andar. (political Chronicle, 2003)
• O fio the missangas. ( Short stories, 2003)
• A chuva pasmada. (Short story, 2004)
• Venenos de Deus, Remédios do Diabo (novel, 2008)
• Jesusalém (novel, 2009)
• A Confissão because Leoa (novel, 2012)

Secondary literature

• Patrick Chabal: Vozes moçambicanas. Literatura e Nacionalidade. Vega, Lisbon 1994, pp. 274 - 291
• Gerhard Schönberger: Mozambican Portuguese literature. Emergence and problems of a national literature. Domus Ed. Europea, Frankfurt q.s. 2002.