Sleepwalking Land

Mia Couto · b. 1955 · Mozambique

Originally Terra Sonâmbula (Portuguese) · translated by David Brookshaw

Why it matters

An old man and a boy wander a landscape gutted by civil war, reading a dead man's notebooks that blur into their own reality. Magical realism forged directly from African civil conflict rather than imported from Latin America.

At a glance

Two interwoven timelines and Couto's neologism-laden, poetic prose complicate the read.