Rain

After the war, I thought all that was left was ashes, hollow ruins . . . Today, I know that's not true. Where man remains, a seed, too, survives, a dream to inseminate time.Published in the aftermath of Mozambique s bloody civil war, Mia Couto s third collection seeks out the places violence could not reach, the places where, the author writes, every man is the same: pretending he s here, dreaming of going away, and plotting his return. Shifting masterfully between forms creation tale to meditation, playful comedy to magical twist these stories grapple with questions of what s been lost and what can be reclaimed, what future exists for a country that broke the yoke of colonialism only to descend into internecine war, what is Mozambican and what is Mozambique. Following fishermen and fortune-tellers, widows and drunks, and one errant hippopotamus, this new translation of stories by the Man Booker-listed author of Confession of the Lioness rediscovers possibility and what it means to be reborn. style='text-align: left;'>Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize style='text-align: left;'>Winner of the Neustadt Prize for Literature, 2014 style='text-align: left;'>Winner of the Camoes Prize for Literature, 2013A Vanity Fair Must-Read Book From Around The World for Winter 2019A Financial Times Summer Book of 2019