Caminhos de Mia Couto: estratégias narrativas em torno da paisagem moçambicana

Abstract

Mia Couto s romanesque work is the inquiry object of this thesis, trying to comprehend the author s contribution in the assertion of the African novel and in the reconstruction of the identity of his country, Mozambique. In order to do this, the study discusses the importance of revealing an occult landscape to the reader, its cultural origin and complex understanding. The chapter that brings this analysis shows how the work reflects the historical and political conditions of domination, social differences, identifying occasionally a slightly engaged accent in Mia Couto s writing, as much as his ideological position and denouncement. Among the detached subjects in the work is African animism, which originates several supernatural circumstances in the plot, as a constant remembrance: in Africa, spirits are everywhere, keeping intense relationship with the people. Around this issue, the thesis discusses the fact that part of the critics classify the work in genres such as the Magical Realism, the Marvellous and the Fantastic. Also the narrative strategies of this author are investigated, as his regular options in the creation of the plots, characters, names of characters and epigraphs. Based on these marks and in other common traces to all his novels perhaps equally present in his short stories we find adequacy between the dichotomic thought system, through the work, and the phrasings that reveal something significant: Mia Couto s novels are propositive, especially when they invite the reader to the constant movement of questioning their proper certainties