The Cartographer of Absences - by Mia Couto (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

"Revelatory . . . An aching, dreamlike immersion." --Carl Hoffman, The Washington Post

"An intensely powerful work about revolution, compromise, and long-buried secrets . . . A haunting, compelling book." --Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

An atmospheric novel about a father and son in the waning days of colonial Mozambique by the winner of the 2025 PEN/Nabokov Award

Diogo Santiago is a celebrated Mozambican poet and intellectual, a well-known professor at the university in his country's capital. In 2019, on the eve of a cyclone that will devastate the East African coast, he returns to his hometown of Beira to receive a tribute from his fellow citizens. As he travels across Mozambique, his mind returns to the past--to his own upbringing, and to the history of his country when it was still a Portuguese colony.

Diogo's father, himself a poet and a journalist, observed a terrible massacre committed during the waning days of the Estado Novo and was persecuted by the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police. Diogo's reflections on his father's life are interspersed with found documents--letters, stories, entries in the journal kept by the PIDE agent who oversaw the case. As Cyclone Idai approaches Beira, threatening to wipe away the physical traces of the world in which he grew up, Diogo is forced to confront the impermanence of his own memories, too.

A haunting novel of historical witness, The Cartographer of Absences is one of Mia Couto's finest works. Drawing on the author's own life in colonial Mozambique, this book is a significant new entry in the world literature canon.

Review Quotes

"Revelatory . . . [The Cartographer of Absences is] a mystery and a love story, an aching, dreamlike immersion into the violent absurdities and racism of Portuguese colonialism in Africa . . . Yet there's beauty here, too, in the writing and in the humanity of those surviving in such a world . . . The narrative thickens, layer upon layer, into a foreboding that feels anxiously fresh." --Carl Hoffman, The Washington Post

"In its temporally fragmented structure and use of found documents, Mia Couto's newly translated novel feels like a new direction for him. It's also an intensely powerful work about revolution, compromise, and long-buried secrets--one that both explores Mozambique's troubled colonial history and raises big questions about ideals and sacrifice. A haunting, compelling book." --Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

"In the rich latest from Couto, a poet reckons with the colonial history of Mozambique . . . Revelations of murder and suicide shade the final act, which is made all the more gripping by a cyclone bearing down on the country. This packs a punch." --Publishers Weekly

"Couto's storytelling is rich, while delivering a straightforward message: 'When a regime starts arresting poets it is because that regime has lost its way' . . . A contemplative study of colonialism's collapse, and its enduring legacy." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

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. Couto has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Camões Prize (the most prestigious Portuguese-language award), the Prémio Vergílio Ferreira, the Prémio União Latina de Literaturas Românicas, the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages, and, most recently, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. He lives in Maputo, where he works as a biologist.

David Brookshaw is an emeritus professor at the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol. He has translated numerous books by Mia Couto, including The Cartographer of Absences, The Drinker of Horizons, The Sword and the Spear, Woman of the Ashes, Confession of the Lioness, The Tuner of Silences, A River Called Time, and Sleepwalking Land.