Praise for Pensativities

"Mia Couto's words help weave the story of Mozambique. Couto's language is enriched by his country's idioms, voices--and possibilities."
--New York Times

"The essays of Pensativities ... confirm Couto's status as a public intellectual."
--The Guardian

"Remarkable ... If his recent Neustadt Prize is any indication, [Couto] is a presumptive Nobel Prize-winning writer that we ... should be reading."
--National Post

"For [Mia Couto], the postcolonial project is not primarily political or economic; it is humanistic in nature, and literary in its means. Its aim is to reconcile history and myth, past and present, subjugator and subject. It brings together black and white, male and female, Africa and the West, young and old, the city and the bush... When reading Couto, it sometimes seems that it is not only the fate of Mozambique or even Africa that is at stake, but that of the whole world."
--Ryu Spaeth, Music & Literature

"If there is an overarching drive that threads the collection together, it's Couto's commitment to recognize history's numerous flaws, and to use this history to embrace a diverse future, full of 'hybridities' of both self and cultural environs ... A fine writer who deserves a wide North American audience ... [Couto] is a constant witness to a country--flush with nouveau riche and mass poverty--trying to figure out its place in both Africa and the world."
--Numéro Cinq

"[Having] helped birth ... the global literary scene's love affair with African fiction, Couto is a polymath who not only sustains a lively scientific career but is also a former political activist once deeply involved in the fight for his country's independence."
--OZY