David Brookshaw

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.

The Sword and the Spear by Mia Couto

By Mia Couto

Autumn 2020
Mia Couto

New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 288 pages. MASTER STORYTELLER MIA COUTO frames an inspired tale with actual events in The Sword and the Spear. The novel illustrate...
Woman of the Ashes by Mia Couto

By Mia Couto

May 2018
Mia Couto

New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018. 272 pages. The first entry in a planned trilogy, Mia Couto’s Woman of the Ashes is a beautiful and grotesque force interweaving history with myth. A...
The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy by Paulina Chiziane

By Paulina Chiziane

November 2016
Paulina Chiziane

New York. Archipelago Books. 2016. 494 pages. In The First Wife, Paulina Chiziane, the first Mozambican woman to publish a novel, writes from the perspective of Rami, who is Tony’s only wife—...
Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto

By Mia Couto

November 2015
Mia Couto

David Brookshaw, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. ISBN 9780374129231. Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, Mia Couto’s Confession of the Lioness tackles large iss...
Re-enchanting the World: The 2014 Neustadt Prize Acceptance Speech

By Mia Couto

January 2015
Mia Couto

One of the most prominent writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa, Mia Couto was born in 1955 in Beira, Mozambique. Couto studied medicine and biology in Maputo and began his literary career du...