2024-09-02 21:55:43
Mozambican author Mia Couto has been awarded the prestigious FIL literary prize at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico. The jury praised the author of the novel “Confession of the Lion” for his “excellent literary work” in Portugal, which is attentive and sensitive to the African continent and its history, culture and geopolitical relations.
The prize, worth 150,000 US dollars (around 135,000 euros), will be awarded on November 30th at the opening of the Guadalajara Book Fair, the largest literary event in the Spanish-speaking world. The 69-year-old Couto, whose full name is António Emílio Leite Couto, won the prestigious Camões Award in 2013, the most important literary award in the Portuguese-speaking world.
Born in Beira, Mozambique in 1955 to a Portuguese couple, the books of the novelist, poet and short story writer were strongly influenced by Brazilian writers such as Jorge Amado and Carlos Drummond de Andrade and by the Latin American “magical truth “.
Some of Couto’s books were published in German, including “Sleepwalking Land” (dipa, Frankfurt am Main 1994) and “Unter dem Frangipanibaum” (Unionsverlag, Zurich 2007).
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