Sea Loves Me: Selected Stories

(Paperback)

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An NPR Best Book of 2021

New and selected fiction, over half in English for the first time, from the winner of the 2014 Neustadt Prize.

Known internationally for his novels, Neustadt Prize-winner Mia Couto first became famous for his short stories. Sea Loves Me includes sixty-four of his best, thirty-six of which appear in English for the first time. Covering the entire arc of Couto's career, this collection displays the Mozambican author's inventiveness, sensitivity, and social range with greater richness than any previous collectionfrom early stories that reflect the harshness of life under Portuguese colonialism; to magical tales of rural Africa; to contemporary fables of the fluidity of race and gender, environmental disaster, and the clash between the countryside and the city. The title novella, long acclaimed as one of Couto's best works but never before available in English, caps this collection with the lyrical story of a search for a lost father that leads unexpectedly to love.

Reviews

Praise for Sea Loves Me

"Mia Coutos words help weave the story of Mozambique. Coutos language is enriched by his countrys idioms, voicesand possibilities."
New York Times

A worthy ... introduction to a unique and atmospheric African writers work.
Kirkus

Couto employs his haunting lyricism ... to examine the burdens of race, history, and culture in the aftermath of Mozambiques 1974 independence from Portugal ... Mia Coutos multivalent vision also manifests in the seamless merging of author and translators, original and translated texts ... Like Mia Coutos aesthetic effort to render whole the many facets of his contradictory identity, the translators linguistic dance simultaneously pays homage to his original fiction, and gives birth to its autonomous and indelible existence in English.
Asymptote

The stories offer a kaleidoscopic vision of Coutos world, deeply rooted in Mozambique but imbued with an ethereal, otherworldly quality. Often in just a few pages, Couto is able to breathe life into a variety of characters Sea Loves Me is a thrilling addition to Coutos extraordinary body of work, bringing together new and old stories that evoke past and present Mozambique, memories and dreamscapes, natural and spirit worlds. War, race, sky and sea, death and desirethese are just a few of the eternal elements Couto uses to mold his wise, enchanting fiction.
World Literature Today

Mozambican writer Couto (Woman of the Ashes) draws on African proverbs for a captivating collection of 64 brief, aphoristic stories, set mostly in Mozambique There are captivating stories of people at the margins Many entries elude easy interpretation, making them all the more haunting. Each story contains enchanting insights into human nature.
Publishers Weekly

Stunning Packed with an incredible 64 stories, Sea Loves Me features 36 of Coutos pieces translated to English for the first time ever, including the titular novella. With a voice that immediately grabs you, it's a great entry for readers new to Couto and a treat for those already acquainted with his sharp, wise, playful, and absorbing writing.
Open Book

"Extraordinary ... Begin anywhere, with any story, and you as reader are safe within Coutos world. The imagination is without limit, the poetic force is exhilarating and often disturbing, while the surprise of some is breathtaking ... Couto is as much a master of the pointed anecdote as the longer tale."
Winnipeg Free Press

"What makes his stories so special is the way in which he manages to describe even the most violent events as if they were coated in honey. There are no sharp edges in Coutos writing, no matter how much desperation and darkness the scenario he describes contains. Everything seems taken out of a dream, and reading his books is like being constantly, softly lulled into the story ... This collection offers a perfect glimpse into Coutos writing, and its a great pathway into his novels."
Book Riot

"Covering the entire arc of Coutos career, this collection displays the Mozambican authors inventiveness, sensitivity, and social range with greater richness than any previous collection"
Portuguese American Journal

Praise for Mia Couto

Mia Coutos stories of civilisation and barbarity are told through a language that is precise and profound; he weaves together the living tradition of legend, poetry and song.
International Man Booker shortlist jury citation

These literary fragments are dreamy but hopeful responses to Mozambiques violent past, magical tales that find solace in the wisdom of rivers and trees, fishermen and fortune tellers, children and blind men Coutos stories are rooted yet timeless, both whimsical and deeply spiritual.
Vanity Fair

[Couto is] a brilliant aphorist. There are countless sentences that have the weight and wisdom of ancient proverbs.
Wall Street Journal

Coutos narrative tone, at once deadpan and beguiling, and his virtuoso management of time place him alongside the best Latin American magic realists.
Times Literary Supplement

One of the greatest living writers in the Portuguese language [Couto] cracks open a welcoming window onto a vast world of literary pleasures.
The Millions

Author Bio

Born in Beira, Mozambique, Mia Couto directed the Mozambican state news agency during the years following independence from Portugal. Since the late 1980s, he has worked as an environmental biologist and a writer. Couto is the author of more than thirty books, which have been published in thirty-five countries. He has won major literary prizes in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Brazil., Italy and the United States, including the 2013 Cames Prize and the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He was a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize and the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award. Mia Couto lives with his family in Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as an environmental consultant.

David Brookshaws many translations include Mia Coutos recent novels Woman of the Ashes and The Sword and the Spear, as well as earlier Couto novels such as The Tuner of Silences, Sleepwalking Land, and Under the Frangipani. He has translated widely from the literatures of Lusophone Asia and the Azores Islands. Brookshaw is Professor Emeritus of Lusophone Studies at the University of Bristol, England.

Eric M. B. Becker is the recipient of a PEN Heim Award, a Fulbright Fellowship and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2019, he earned honorable mention from the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for his translation of Mia Couto's Rain and Other Stories. He has translated works by, among others, the Brazilian writers Lygia Fagundes Telles and Fernanda Torres and the Angolan-Portuguese writer Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. He lives in New York.