A Postmodern Nationalist : Truth, Orality, and Gender in the Work of Mia Couto

This is the first book in the English language devoted to the study of the work of Mozambique's leading contemporary author, Mia Couto.

Widely read in the lusophone world and considered one of the most important active African writers, Couto's fiction is riddled by a central paradox-it forges a distinct postmodern national identity for a country historically plagued by repeated and detrimental interference from abroad.

Phillip Rothwell argues that Couto is a writer who eschews and reinforces the national frontier.

In fact, Couto produces a cultural phenomenon that is markedly Mozambican by corrupting aspects of the European legacy Portugal left on the African continent, fusing this distortion with a corrupted version of African heritage, and demarcating literary boundaries through fluidity.