David Brookshaw is an emeritus professor at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published widely in the field of Brazilian and lusophone postcolonial studies. His translations include, most recently, Mia Couto’s Confession of the Lioness and Pensativities and Other Interinventions: Selected Essays, both forthcoming in spring 2015. His translation of Couto’s “In Some Other Life I Was a Bird” appears on page 53.