The writing of history in the novel Sleepwalking Land, by Mia Couto

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how the novel Sleepwalking Land (1992), by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto, can be seen as an alternative version to historiography based on both the story that it actually tells and another one it silences about. For this, I consider Couto’s narrative as a kind of eyewitness testimony, as the novel may be regarded as the result of the writer’s need for “speaking out” after a sixteen-years long civil war (1976-1992) in his home country. I am thus interested in the reader (who replaces the listener here) to whom the author addresses his narrative in order to understand the intricacies of the story he writes. However, I’m also taking into account the position occupied by Mia Couto in the reality of his country. I realize that the author writes his version of history based on three interrelated trends: (i) the duty of memory, (ii) the construction of Africanness, and (iii) the perspective of future.