The Mozambican writer Mia Couto has been awarded the important FIL Literature Prize at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico. The jury praised the author of the novel “The Lioness’s Confession” for his “outstanding literary work” in Portuguese, which raises awareness and sensitivity for the African continent and its historical, cultural and geopolitical relations.
The prize, worth 150,000 US dollars (around 135 million euros), will be awarded on November 30 at the opening of the Guadalajara Book Fair, the largest literary event in the Spanish-speaking world. Couto, 69, whose full name is António EmÃlio Leite Couto, won the prestigious Camões Prize in 2013, the most important literary award in the Portuguese-speaking world.
The books of the novelist, poet and short story writer, born in 1955 in Beira, Mozambique, to a Portuguese couple, are strongly influenced by Brazilian authors such as Jorge Amado and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, as well as by Latin American “magical realism”. Some of Couto’s books have been published in German, including “Das Schlafwandelnde Land” (dipa, Frankfurt am Main 1994) and “Unter dem Frangipanibaum” (Unionsverlag, Zürich 2007).
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240902-930-221137/1
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