The Tuner of Silences

Mia Couto

feb 2013 · Biblioasis International Translation Series Libro 9 · Biblioasis

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A RADIO FRANCE-CULTURE/TÉLÉRAMA BEST WORK OF FICTION
BY THE WINNER OF THE 2013 CAMÕES PRIZE
AND THE WINNER OF THE 2014 NEUSTADT PRIZE
“Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa.""—Doris Lessing
“By meshing the richness of African beliefs . . . into the Western framework of the novel, he creates a mysterious and surreal epic.”—Henning Mankell
Mwanito was eleven when he saw a woman for the first time, and the sight so surprised him he burst into tears.
Mwanito has been living in a former big-game park for eight years. The only people he knows are his father, his brother, an uncle, and a servant. He’s been told that the rest of the world is dead, that all roads are sad, that they wait for an apology from God. In the place his father calls Jezoosalem, Mwanito has been told that crying and praying are the same thing. Both, it seems, are forbidden.
The eighth novel by the internationally bestselling Mia Couto, The Tuner of Silences is the story of Mwanito’s struggle to reconstruct a family history that his father is unable to discuss. With the young woman’s arrival in Jezoosalem, however, the silence of the past quickly breaks down, and both his father’s story and the world are heard once more.
The Tuner of Silences has been published to acclaim in more than half a dozen countries. Now in its first English translation, this story of an African boy's quest for the truth endures as a magical, humanizing confrontation between one child and the legacy of war.

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Mia Couto, an environmental biologist from Mozambique, is the author of 25 books of fiction, essays and poems in his native Portuguese. Couto’s novels and short story collections have been translated into 20 languages. Two of his novels have been made into feature films. His work has been awarded important literary prizes in Mozambique, South Africa, Portugal, Italy and Brazil. His books have been bestsellers in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Six of Couto’s books have been translated into English in the United Kingdom: two short story collections by Heinemann and four novels by Serpent’s Tail.
David Brookshaw is a professor of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol (London), and the General Editor of the HiPLA Monograph Series. He is the translator of six books by Couto, including Sleepwalking Land and The Last Flight of the Flamingo.