Pensativities

"One of the greatest living writers in the Portuguese language."—Philip Graham, The Millions "Subtle and elegant."—The Wall Street Journal "At once deadpan and beguiling."—The Times Literary Supplement "To understand what makes António 'Mia' Emílio Leite Couto special—even extraordinary—we have to loosen our grip on the binary that distinguishes between 'the West' and 'Africa.' Couto is 'white' without not being African, and as an 'African' writer he's one of the most important figures in a global Lusophone literature that stretches across three continents."—The New Inquiry What would Barack Obama's 2004 campaign have looked like if it unfolded in an African nation? What does it mean to be an African writer today? How do writers and poets from all continents teach us to cross the sertão, the savannah, the barren places where we're forced to walk within ourselves? Bringing together the best pieces from his previously untranslated nonfiction collections, alongside new material presented here for the first time in any language, Pensativities offers English readers a taste of Mia Couto as essayist, lecturer, and journalist—with essays on cosmopolitanism, poverty, culture gaps, conservation, and more. Mia Couto, an environmental biologist from Mozambique, is the author of twenty five books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His work has been translated into twenty languages worldwide. In 2007 he was the first African author to win the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages, in 2013 he was awarded the €100,000 Camões Prize for Literature, and in 2014 he received World Literature Today's $50,000 Neustadt Prize for Literature.

Bringing together decolonial, Romantic and global literature perspectives, Transcultural Ecocriticism explores innovative new directions for the field of environmental literary studies. By examining these literatures across a range of geographical locations and historical periods – from Romantic period travel writing to Chinese science fiction and Aboriginal Australian poetry – the book makes a compelling case for the need for ecocriticism to competently translate between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, planetary and local, and contemporary and pre-modern perspectives. Leading scholars from Australasia and North America explore links between Indigenous knowledges, Romanticism, globalisation, avant-garde poetics and critical theory in order to chart tensions as well as affinities between these discourses in a variety of genres of environmental representation, including science fiction, poetry, colonial natural history and oral narrative.

Already well-established in the Lusophone world, Mia Couto is increasingly acknowledged as a major voice in World literature. Winner of the Camões Prize for Literature in 2013, the most prestigious literary prize honouring Lusophone writers, he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2014, and in 2015 was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Yet, despite this high profile there are very few full-length critical studiesin English about his writing. Mia Couto is known for his imaginative re-working of Portuguese, making it distinctively Mozambican in character. This book brings together some of the key scholars of his work such as Phillip Rothwell, Luís Madureira, and his long-time English translator David Brookshaw. Contributors examine not only his early works, which were written in the context of the 16-year post-independence civil war in Mozambique, but alsothe wide span of Couto's contemporary writing as a novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. There are contributions on his work in ecology, theatre and journalism, as well as on translation and Mozambican nationalist politics. Most importantly the contributors engage with the significance of Couto's writing to contemporary discussions of African literature, Lusophone studies and World literature. Grant Hamilton is Associate Professor of English literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the editor of Reading Marechera (James Currey, 2013). David Huddart is Associate Professor of English literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kongand is author of Involuntary Associations: World Englishes and Postcolonial Studies (Liverpool University Press, 2014]

African, Lusophone, and Afro-Hispanic Cultural Dialogue is a collection of essays of broad historical and geographic scope that advances analytical perspectives regarding a highly transcultural and changing African continent enmeshed in the vestiges of slavery and colonialism and the complex dynamics of post-colonialism. Mostly grounded in literary studies, the essays discuss the interconnections between Africa and its Lusophone and Afro-Hispanic diaspora. Particular focus is given to how they relate to the politics of identity and assimilation, migration and displacement, the concept of “nation”, Eurocentrism and racial essentialisms, as well as Black aesthetics.

Research volume on urban energy transition that will have wide interdisciplinary appeal to researchers in energy, urban and environmental studies.

A radical revaluation of how contemporary society perceives death—and an argument for how it can make us happy. “He who would teach men to die would teach them to live,” writes Montaigne in Essais, and in How to Die: A Book about Being Alive, Ray Robertson takes up the challenge. Though contemporary society avoids the subject and often values the mere continuation of existence over its quality, Robertson argues that the active and intentional consideration of death is neither morbid nor frivolous, but instead essential to our ability to fully value life. How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.

Examines the representations of migration in African literature, film, and other visual media, with an eye to the stylistic features of these works as well as their contributions to debates on migration

The highly anticipated third novel in a historical series that began with International Booker-shortlisted The Unseen The war is over, and Ingrid Barrøy leaves the island that shares her name to search for the father of her daughter. Alexander, the Russian POW who survived the sinking of the Rigel, has attempted to cross the mountains to Sweden, and now Ingrid follows, carrying their child in her arms, the girl’s dark eyes and a handwritten note her only mementoes of their relationship. Along the way she will encounter partisans and collaborators, refugees and deserters, sinners and servants in a country still bearing the scars of occupation—and before her journey’s end, she’ll be forced to ask herself how well she really knows the man she’s risking everything to find. Preceded by the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Unseen and the critically acclaimed White Shadow, Eyes of the Rigel is an unforgettable odyssey and a captivating investigation of memory, guilt, and hope.