http://www.policymic.com
António
Emílio Leite Couto (Mia Couto) has just been announced as the 2014 Neustadt
Prize Laureate at the culminating banquet of the 2013 Neustadt Festival
for International Literature and Culture. He is the first writer from Mozambique ever to be
nominated or awarded the $50,000 prize.
The Neustadt International
Prize for Literature was first
established in 1969 and is awarded biennially to a living writer in any genre
whose work has been translated into English. Like the Nobel Prize in
Literature, it is awarded not for a single work, but for a body of work. In
fact, the Neustadt is often called the "American Nobel" because of
the festival's history of picking writers who will later go on to win the Nobel.
In the last 42 years, 30 former Neustadt jurors, nominees, or laureates have won the Nobel in the years following their
involvement with the Neustadt festival.
Nine international jurors hailing from countries as
diverse as Ethiopia and South Korea nominated writers for this year's prize and
convened on October 31 in Norman, OK to pick a winner. Couto came out as the
favorite over the likes Chang-Rae Lee, Edward P. Jones, and Haruki Murakami. Couto, whose novel Sleepwalking Land was named one of the 12 best African books of the 20th century by
the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, has won many other accolades for his work
in Portuguese, including the 2013 Camões Prize for
Literature.
I
interviewed Couto after he received the news:
Gracie Jin
(GJ): First of all, congratulations!
Mia Couto
(MC): Thank you very much, I am very happy. It is a sad moment for Mozambique
because we are starting a war that we thought would never come back again. So
to receive this good news is something like a compensation for me.
GJ: You are
the first writer from Mozambique to be nominated for and to win the Neustadt
International Prize for Literature. What does this prize mean for Mozambican
literature?
MC:
Mozambique is a very young country trying to find and affirm its unique
identity in a world that often does not accept alternative narratives unless
they conform to a certain folkloric exoticism. We are an African country trying
to deny the stereotypes of what is 'typically' African, which is normally
associated with negative and victimist values. The clichés about Africa are
often benevolent when it comes to music, dance, or sport, but in literature
they often are not.
I write to
escape from this invisible form of slavery, this submission to what we call
reason and reality.
GJ: You are
such a prolific writer, publishing almost a book a year since you started
writing 30 years ago. What drives you to write?
MC: I find
myself constantly inventing different reasons for my activity as a writer.
Perhaps there is no real explanation because writing escapes that rationality.
I think I need to feel that I am part of something that can't be contained in
what we normally call reality. I write to escape from this invisible form of
slavery, this submission to what we call reason and reality.
GJ: How did
you first start to write?
MC: My
parents were forced to emigrate to Mozambique from Portugal for political
reasons. Since they were unable to return to Portugal, they would reinvent
their homeland by telling stories. Every night they sat by our beds and told us
stories of the land, the family, and the past they missed so much. By doing this,
the past became present, the dead came alive, and my parents became children
like us. The passion with which they invented these stories was my first
invitation to the literary world. Inside our house, a certain Europe was passed
to me, but beyond that frontier, Africa was also telling stories with different
voices and a different way of thinking and feeling. I am the result of this
crossing of lines — a mulatto of narratives and existences.
GJ: You've
written novels and short stories and books of poetry — but you're also a
biologist. How does your scientific work influence your art?
MC: What I
search for in my scientific work is a familiarity with other living creatures
that have a different logic and language from ours. I want to become part of their
universe and to recover a lost proximity. Mozambicans have a different notion
of the borders between what is human and not human — what is alive and not
alive. The way I perceive science is very close to that form of finding myself
as part of a sacred web of relationships.
GJ: Who are
your literary influences?
MC: I am
strongly influenced by literature from Brazil — João Guimarães Rosa, Carlos
Drummond de Andrade, and João Cabral de Melo Neto — as well as by other Latin
American writers — Juan Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez.
GJ: Is there
a book that is closest to your heart?
MC: The most
important book to me is the most unfinished work, O Livro do Desassossego (The
Book of Disquiet), by Fernando Pessoa. It is my Bible.
GJ: What
books or authors would you recommend for readers interested in learning more
about Mozambique?
MC: Authors
like Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa and Paulina Chiziane compose a picture of the diversity
and complexity of Mozambican society. Khosa's novel Ualalapi and Chiziane's Niketche would be a good place to start.
GJ: In your
opinion, what is the most exciting new writer, book, or trend in international
literature today?
MC: It is
very difficult to name them. I think there is a new trend in African Literature
in that it feels more free to be just literature without the obligation of
being "African" or a tool of affirmation. In this field it is
impossible not to recognize Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or the Angolan novelist José Eduardo Agualusa.
Literature
has today the same role as always: re-enchanting the word and sustaining the
desire for dreams and dreaming.
GJ: What is
the role of literature in the 21st century?
MC:
Literature has today the same role as always: re-enchanting the word and
sustaining the desire for dreams and dreaming.
GJ: Does art
have a duty during times of war?
MC: After 16
years of war, it became clear to me that art (and particularly poetry and
literature) was a kind of resistance. The first intention of war is to
dehumanize. And artistic language can be, in those circumstances, a clear way
of rebuilding humanity.
After 16
years of war, it became clear to me that art (and particularly poetry and
literature) was a kind of resistance.
GJ: Do you
have any advice for young writers?
MC: To be
available to different narratives, to be available to become other persons. A
writer is someone who, first of all, is able to listen. To listen not only to
the words, but the dreams of those who seem distant and diverse.
GJ: Your
last book, A Confissão da Leoa, was published in 2012. Are you
working on anything new? What's next?
MC: This
week, I am completing a contribution for a new book that was started by José Saramago. He wrote the first chapter of what
was supposed to become a novel against the war. His widow, Pilar del Rio, had
the idea of inviting 10 writers to finish that book, each one writing a
different and autonomous chapter. Other than that, I am working on a historical
novel about a Mozambican emperor who ruled all of the south of Mozambique until
the beginning of the 20th century.
Mia Couto
was just named the 2014 laureate for the Neustadt International Prize for
Literature. His most recent books in English are The Tuner of Silences and The Blind Fisherman.
