A RADIO FRANCE-CULTURE/TÉLÉRAMA BEST WORK OF FICTION
BY THE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
THE WINNER OF THE 2014 NEUSTADT PRIZE
AND THE WINNER OF THE 2013 CAMÕES PRIZE
"Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa.""--Doris
Lessing
"By meshing the richness of African beliefs . . . into the Western
framework of the novel, he creates a mysterious and surreal
epic."--Henning Mankell
Mwanito was eleven when he saw a woman for the first time, and the sight
so surprised him he burst into tears.
Mwanito has been living in a former big-game park for eight years. The
only people he knows are his father, his brother, an uncle, and a
servant. He's been told that the rest of the world is dead, that all
roads are sad, that they wait for an apology from God. In the place his
father calls Jezoosalem, Mwanito has been told that crying and praying
are the same thing. Both, it seems, are forbidden.
The eighth novel by the internationally bestselling Mia Couto, The
Tuner of Silences is the story of Mwanito's struggle to reconstruct a
family history that his father is unable to discuss. With the young
woman's arrival in Jezoosalem, however, the silence of the past quickly
breaks down, and both his father's story and the world are heard once
more.
The Tuner of Silences has been published to acclaim in more than half
a dozen countries. Now in its first English translation, this story of
an African boy's quest for the truth endures as a magical, humanizing
confrontation between one child and the legacy of war.
