Abstract:
Mia Couto is a Mozambican writer known for an aesthetics of the
fantastic in his numerous works. In most of his writings, he blurs
the distinctions between the human and the non-human, land and
water, the natural and the supernatural. This is particularly evident
in his 2006 novel Sleepwalking Land, set in the context of the
Mozambican civil war. This paper argues that the elusive figure of
the water spirit is an ideal lens by which to read Sleepwalking Land
to capture the complexity of the horrendous civil war. Drawing on
magical realism, I consider Couto’s use of water-based indigenous
beliefs to underscore ideas of flexibility and mobility in a land
ravaged by war, while revising the myth of powerful water spirits
in line with the raging civil war. The chaos of war is amplified in
the novel through actions of spirits that encroach on the human
world, influencing events and problematizing the laws of logic,
time and space. Their intractability enables Couto to foreground
ambiguity and hybridity with characters who assume different
forms at different stages of the fragmented plot, mirroring the
raging war.
