Plot Summary
Sleepwalking Land
Mia Couto
Sleepwalking Land
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992
Plot Summary
The acclaimed 1992 novel Sleepwalking Land by white Mozambican author Mia Couto was first published in Couto’s native Portuguese as Terra Sonâmbula, and then translated into English by David Brookshaw in 2006. A magical realistic narrative set in the aftermath of the civil war that devastated Mozambique in the 1980s, the novel won the 1996 National Fiction Award from the Association of Mozambican Writers (AEMO) and was one of the selection committee’s choices for awarding Couto the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Relying heavily on dreamlike imagery, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, and drawing on traditional Mozambican folklore for his metaphors, Couto contrasts the beauty of the landscape with the horrors faced by survivors of the war. The fighting itself is not depicted. Instead, readers are expected to know that in the 1970s, Mozambique fought a war of independence against its colonizer, Portugal—but that slowly, as Portuguese power retreated, the Mozambican side splintered into factions that began fighting against each other. Orderly civil war descended into chaotic and opportunistic banditry and warlordism, and groups of soldiers marauded the countryside. In all, close to a million people were killed and five million were displaced from their homes.
The novel opens as two men—middle-aged Tuahir and teenage Muidinga—meet each other at a refugee camp and flee. Staying at the refugee camp can only lead to death, an old woman explains—her solution is to force herself to do heavy physical labor to always appear useful and not expendable. The relationship between the two men is not clear; they could be father and son, or nephew and uncle, or just simpatico strangers. This ambiguity is compounded by the fact that Muidinga has amnesia—because of a recent illness, he can no longer walk well, read, write, or remember his name. As the pair runs, much of the early plot focuses on the young man recovering these life skills as well as knowledge of the world around him.
Tuahir and Muidinga travel down a long-abandoned road searching for food and shelter. As they journey, they find many signs of the war that has been raging: primarily corpses on the roadside. Eventually, the two men come upon a burned-out bus, which they decide would make as good a place as any to set up camp. While removing the charred bodies inside the bus, Muidinga finds a set of diary notebooks next to one of the dead men. He decides to read a portion of the man’s writing to Tuahir each night before bed.
From here, the narrative splits, with alternate chapters following Muidinga and Tuahir, and the others comprising the diary entries of Kindzu.
Muidinga and Tuahir spend their days scavenging for food or other living people while avoiding gunmen and former soldiers. The young man sometimes voices his desire to find his parents, but the older one warns him away from this dangerous fantasy—children are a terrible burden to parents during wartime. Instead, the two men try to be everything to each other. In one disturbing moment, Tuahir sexually caresses Muidinga while talking to him about a beautiful girl from a fairy tale. Later, when Muidinga wonders where his memory has gone, the explanation offered is supernatural: Maybe a witch doctor removed his memories because they were too horrible to hold on to.
Every now and then, the men come across other survivors, most of who exist in a nightmarish version of magical realist tropes. One man has dedicated himself to spinning sisal—his dream is to make a rope to hang himself. Another man has been trying to dig a river without tools; eventually, he hopes river water will wash away the roving gangs and protect him. Yet another used to be a farmer but has given up on traditional crops—instead, he now buries people alive in the ground so that new people will grow out of them to repopulate the decimated land. At one point, they encounter a ghost who tells Muidinga, who might be his son, that death doesn’t bring release: “‘I'm dead but disconsolate […] our fate is that of a mat: history will wipe its feet on our backs.’”
The notebooks tell the story of Kindzu, an idealistic young man on an epic journey. They begin with Kindzu’s life in his town. Kindzu’s father has always dreamed of Mozambican independence, so he is overjoyed when Portuguese rule is overthrown. Kindzu’s younger brother, born right after independence, is named for June 25, the official day of the declaration. However, things turn sour quickly, as independence doesn’t bring about peace, instead, ushering in a long civil war. The little brother turns slowly, magically into a cockerel, while the family mourns his loss. When the town’s river runs dry, Kindzu leaves to travel across the country in order to become a Naparama, one of the mythical warriors of justice who have supernatural powers and can’t be killed by bullets. On the way, he searches for his love, Surendra, and finds a family of sorts with a woman named Farida, who is looking for her son Gaspar.
Before he dies, Kindzu has a vision of Gaspar—who is possibly Muidinga—and calls out to him. Kindzu sees himself die and sees that his notebooks will outlive him and carry his story on.
Relying heavily on dreamlike imagery, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, and drawing on traditional Mozambican folklore for his metaphors, Couto contrasts the beauty of the landscape with the horrors faced by survivors of the war. The fighting itself is not depicted. Instead, readers are expected to know that in the 1970s, Mozambique fought a war of independence against its colonizer, Portugal—but that slowly, as Portuguese power retreated, the Mozambican side splintered into factions that began fighting against each other. Orderly civil war descended into chaotic and opportunistic banditry and warlordism, and groups of soldiers marauded the countryside. In all, close to a million people were killed and five million were displaced from their homes.
The novel opens as two men—middle-aged Tuahir and teenage Muidinga—meet each other at a refugee camp and flee. Staying at the refugee camp can only lead to death, an old woman explains—her solution is to force herself to do heavy physical labor to always appear useful and not expendable. The relationship between the two men is not clear; they could be father and son, or nephew and uncle, or just simpatico strangers. This ambiguity is compounded by the fact that Muidinga has amnesia—because of a recent illness, he can no longer walk well, read, write, or remember his name. As the pair runs, much of the early plot focuses on the young man recovering these life skills as well as knowledge of the world around him.
Tuahir and Muidinga travel down a long-abandoned road searching for food and shelter. As they journey, they find many signs of the war that has been raging: primarily corpses on the roadside. Eventually, the two men come upon a burned-out bus, which they decide would make as good a place as any to set up camp. While removing the charred bodies inside the bus, Muidinga finds a set of diary notebooks next to one of the dead men. He decides to read a portion of the man’s writing to Tuahir each night before bed.
From here, the narrative splits, with alternate chapters following Muidinga and Tuahir, and the others comprising the diary entries of Kindzu.
Muidinga and Tuahir spend their days scavenging for food or other living people while avoiding gunmen and former soldiers. The young man sometimes voices his desire to find his parents, but the older one warns him away from this dangerous fantasy—children are a terrible burden to parents during wartime. Instead, the two men try to be everything to each other. In one disturbing moment, Tuahir sexually caresses Muidinga while talking to him about a beautiful girl from a fairy tale. Later, when Muidinga wonders where his memory has gone, the explanation offered is supernatural: Maybe a witch doctor removed his memories because they were too horrible to hold on to.
Every now and then, the men come across other survivors, most of who exist in a nightmarish version of magical realist tropes. One man has dedicated himself to spinning sisal—his dream is to make a rope to hang himself. Another man has been trying to dig a river without tools; eventually, he hopes river water will wash away the roving gangs and protect him. Yet another used to be a farmer but has given up on traditional crops—instead, he now buries people alive in the ground so that new people will grow out of them to repopulate the decimated land. At one point, they encounter a ghost who tells Muidinga, who might be his son, that death doesn’t bring release: “‘I'm dead but disconsolate […] our fate is that of a mat: history will wipe its feet on our backs.’”
The notebooks tell the story of Kindzu, an idealistic young man on an epic journey. They begin with Kindzu’s life in his town. Kindzu’s father has always dreamed of Mozambican independence, so he is overjoyed when Portuguese rule is overthrown. Kindzu’s younger brother, born right after independence, is named for June 25, the official day of the declaration. However, things turn sour quickly, as independence doesn’t bring about peace, instead, ushering in a long civil war. The little brother turns slowly, magically into a cockerel, while the family mourns his loss. When the town’s river runs dry, Kindzu leaves to travel across the country in order to become a Naparama, one of the mythical warriors of justice who have supernatural powers and can’t be killed by bullets. On the way, he searches for his love, Surendra, and finds a family of sorts with a woman named Farida, who is looking for her son Gaspar.
Before he dies, Kindzu has a vision of Gaspar—who is possibly Muidinga—and calls out to him. Kindzu sees himself die and sees that his notebooks will outlive him and carry his story on.