Pensativities: Selected Essays

About the Author

Mia Couto was born in Beira, Mozambique in 1955. In the years after his country gained independence from Portugal, he was director of the Mozambican state news agency, and worked as a newspaper editor and journalist. Since the 1980s, he has combined the profession of environmental biologist with that of writer.

Couto is the author of more than 25 books of fiction, essays and poems that have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won major literary prizes in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Brazil and Italy. African critics chose his novel Sleepwalking Land as one of the twelve best African books of the 20th century. His most recent novel in English, The Tuner of Silences, was long-listed for the 2015 Dublin IMPAC Award.

In 2013 Couto was awarded the Camões Prize, given to a Portuguese-language writer for his life’s work. In 2014 he received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, sometimes dubbed the “American Nobel.” Couto’s books have been bestsellers in Africa, Europe and South America.

Mia Couto lives with his family in Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as an environmental consultant.