Mozambican writer Mia Couto has been unanimously awarded the Grand Prize Conto Branquinho da Fonseca by the Portuguese Writers’ Association (APE) for her book “Compêndio para uneartherclouds,” the organization announced on Tuesday.
The work published by Caminho consists of twenty-two stories that chronicle the trials of people, with a particular focus on women’s voices, and how “their lives are fragmented” by war, famine, drought and “toxic power relations,” according to a statement from APE.
The jury, composed of Fernando Batista, Mario Avelar and Paula Mendes Coelho, highlighted the work as Mia Couto, “wisely mixing the realistic code and the imaginary code, never forgetting the lyrical register, continues to denounce injustices wherever they come from, without forgetting to warn us, albeit in a generally ironic tone, of new ideas, new very harmful threats.”
The Branquinho da Fonseca Short Story Prize, created in 2023 by the Portuguese Writers Association and sponsored by the Cascais City Council and the D. Luís I Foundation, is intended to annually reward short stories in Portuguese.
The monetary value of this award for an outstanding author is 12,500 euros.
In the jury’s report, the new threats that the winning author addresses in the book are: “The loss of memory and the concealment of our roots, the violence of new technologies, the new police of customs and language. Among the many issues [Mia Couto] leave us with this: “Is happiness politically incorrect at a time like this?”
This is a collection of short stories that the author publishes monthly in the magazine Visão, as in the previous volume entitled “The Invisible Elephant Hunter”.
Mia Couto, born in Beira, Mozambique in 1955, worked as a journalist and teacher and is currently a biologist and writer.
Winner of the Camões Prize in 2013, he is the author of, among others, the books Jesusalim, O Último Voo do Flamingo, Vozes Anoitecidas, Estórias Abensonhadas, Terra Sonâmbula, A Varanda do Frangipani and A Varanda do Frangipani. Confessions of a Lioness.
Translated into more than 30 languages, the writer has also been recognized with the Vergilio Ferreira Prize in 1999, the Latin Union Prize for Romantic Literature in 2007, and the Eduardo Lourenço Prize in 2011 for his overall work, among other distinctions.
Terra Sonambula was chosen as one of the 12 best African books of the 20th century, and Jesusalim was included in the top 20 fiction books most published in France, according to France Culture radio and Télérama magazine.