Mia Couto

Sean Rogers (University of the Witwatersrand)

Ed. by Dan Ojwang, University of the Witwatersrand
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.2: Lusophone (Portuguese) and Spanish African Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Newman University), Denise Saive (Independent Scholar - Europe), Maria Tavares (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

Born 5 Jul 1955
Activity 1974-ongoing

Places

Born in Mozambique
Active in Mozambique

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet
Story-writer

Resources

Mia Couto is certainly Mozambique’s most recognised and celebrated contemporary author. He was born António Emílio Leite Couto in Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city, in 1955 to settler parents originally from northern Portugal. According to Couto, it was here that his love of Africa and its stories began. In 1971, he enrolled at Lourenço Marques University, in what is today Maputo, to study medicine. His studies were, however, overshadowed by his militant support of Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Liberation Front of Mozambique, or Frelimo) and its armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. This support was called upon when, in 1974, Frelimo asked Couto to abandon his studies and work towards the propagation of t…

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1184 words

Citation: Rogers, Sean. "Mia Couto". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 February 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12299, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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