Coming back from the dead, the narrator turns into a night spirit and inhabits the head of a Mozambican police inspector who is investigating a surreal murder. But could the true victim be traditional African beliefs and a way of life ravaged first by Portuguese colonialism, then by civil war ,and finally by Western materialism? Using both fable and allegory, Mia Couto creates a mysterious and surreal epic that brilliantly captures the spirit of post-independence Africa.
Mia Couto was born in Beira, Mozambique in 1955. During the years after the independence of his country in 1975, he was the director of the Mozambican Information Agency and the newspaper Noticias. He currently lives in Maputo where he works as an agronomist.
