Abril (Apr 2009)
LANDSCAPE IMPERMANCENCES IN A SLEEPWALKING EARTH: DREAM AND RESISTENCE
Abstract
The present article aims to analyze how Mia Couto's novelistic language in Terra sonâmbula (2007) is permeated uncertainties and oniric elements, which brings his work close fantastic realism. Dream and landscape succeeding changes present themselves as traces of resistance. Couto's writing represents a shocking questioning on the oppressive condition of the Mozambican people, who are crushed by a civil war that followed the fight for Independence. In a country which faces a serious economic and cultural crisis, Mia Couto's fiction shows the “heroic” resistance of the Mozambique people who, by means of the mythical way and oral tradition (in a process which tradition is one the main pillars), still dare to dream and to have hope, despite barbarism, cruelty, arbitrariness and abuse of power. Couto's fiction increases the potential value of dreams to convert and regenerate life. Moreover, his work originates a literature engaged both to the historic and social scope. It is literature which creates and recreates oppressiveness and real oppressor – clamorous traits in colonial and post-colonial Mozambique.
