Historical Fiction — The Book Roads

Sleepwalking Land

Mia Couto

In war-torn Mozambique, an elderly man named Tuahir and a young boy, Muidinga, wander through a devastated landscape, searching for safety amid the violence of the civil war. They eventually take shelter in a burnt-out bus, where they discover the notebooks of a dead man named Kindzu. As Muidinga begins reading the notebooks aloud, another story unfolds: Kindzu's journey through a country torn apart by conflict, his search for a group of legendary warriors, and his longing for a world beyond violence. The two narratives gradually become intertwined, blurring the boundaries between memory, dreams, folklore, and reality. As the characters travel through a landscape haunted by displacement and destruction, storytelling becomes a way to preserve hope and imagine a future beyond war. Blending magical realism, African oral traditions, and historical experience, Sleepwalking Land is a poetic exploration of survival, identity, and the search for belonging amid the devastation of civil conflict.

Mozambique 2006