PinT Book Club 14th session

Welcome to the 14th meeting of PinT Book Club! Join us to discuss Confession of the Lioness with Mozambican author Mia Couto and translator David Brookshaw. This will be a bilingual event (English and Portuguese).

Confession of the Lioness was first published in 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About the book

DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL LITERARY AWARD SHORTLIST

A dark, poetic mystery about the tribal women of Kulumani and the lionesses that hunt them  Told through two haunting interwoven diaries, Mia Couto's Confession of the Lioness reveals the enigmatic world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting and killing the women who live there.

Mariamar, a young woman from the village, finds her life thrown into chaos just as the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, the outsider Archangel Bullseye, arrives in town. Mariamar's sister was recently killed in one of the attacks, and her father has imprisoned her in his home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel attempts to track the lionesses out in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to these predators than meets the eye, he slowly starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more and more dangerous, until it's no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their culture, and the animal predators closing in, it becomes clear that the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all, but rather spirits conjured by the ancient witchcraft of the women themselves.

Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women's oppression, Confession of the Lioness combines reality, superstition, and magic realism in an atmospheric, gripping novel.

Mia Couto, born in Beira, Mozambique, in 1955, is one of the most prominent writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa. After studying medicine and biology in Maputo, he worked as a journalist and headed several Mozambican national newspapers and magazines. The author of Confession of the Lioness, The Tuner of Silences, and Sleepwalking Land, among other books, Couto has been awarded the Camões Prize for Literature and the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature, among other awards. He was also shortlisted for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. He lives in Maputo, where he works as a biologist.

David Brookshaw was born in London. He is Professor of Luso-Brazilian Studies at Bristol University, UK, with a specialist interest in postcolonial literatures in Portuguese, comparative literature,and literary translation. He has translated a number of books by Mia Couto, including most recently Sleepwalking Land (2006), and A River Called Time (in press). READ LESSHe has also compiled an anthology of stories by the Portuguese writer José Rodrigues Miguéis, who lived for many years in New York City, The Polyhedric Mirror: Tales of American Life, as well as translating stories of immigrant life in North America by the Portuguese/Azorean/New England writer Onésimo Almeida, Tales from the Tenth Island, both of which were published in 2006.

Praise for CONFESSION OF THE LIONESS:

"Though the plot can get lost in dense dreamlike passages, its depiction of the oppression of women is impossible to shake. Couto weaves a surreal mystery of humanity against nature, men against women, and tradition against modernity."

— Publishers Weekly

“[Couto] must share kudos with Brookshaw, whose translation beautifully captures the lyricism of this strange and disconcerting novel. Recommended for readers who embrace ambiguity."

— Library Journal

"A haunting, ethereal flight of magical realism."

— Kirkus