Biblioasis is proud to announce that
MIA COUTO
is the
winner of the
$50,000
2014 NEUSTADT PRIZE
On Friday, Nov. 1,
in Norman, Oklahoma, Mozambican novelist Mia Couto was awarded the 2014
Neustadt Prize for Literature. Following just five months after the €100,000
Camões Prize for Literature, which he received in May of 2013, the Neustadt
marks the second major lifetime achievement award that Couto has received this
year.
The $50,000 prize
is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, the Neustadt family, and World Literature Today
(WLT), the university’s award-winning magazine of
international literature and culture. Chosen biennially by a jury of seven or
more members, the prize, which is the first international award of its scope to
originate in America, honours an author for overall literary accomplishment.
Because 30 of the Neustadt’s winners, nominees and jurors have also won the
Nobel Prize, it has been dubbed “the American Nobel,” and authors associated
with both include Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, Orhan Pamuk, Mo Yan,
and Alice Munro.
Gabriella
Ghermandi, who nominated Mr. Couto for the Neustadt, has praised him as “an
author who addresses not just his country but the entire world, all human
beings.” WLT executive director Robert Con Davis-Undiano describes
Couto’s project as an attempt “to lift the yoke of colonialism from a culture
by reinvigorating its language. A master of Portuguese prose, he wants to lift
that burden one word, one sentence, and one narrative at a time, and in this endeavor
he has few if any peers.”
Other contenders
for this year’s prize included Haruki Murakami, César Aira, and Edward P. Jones.
Couto is the
first Mozambican author to receive the Neustadt prize. “Mozambique is a very
young country,” Couto commented recently in an interview with PolicyMic: “an African country trying to
deny the stereotypes of what is ‘typically’ African, which is normally
associated with negative and victimist values.” He observes that the prize
announcement comes as happy news in an otherwise sad time for his nation, which
once more is confronting the prospect of civil war.
Couto, whose most well-known work is the novel Sleepwalking
Land (1992), is the author of over 25 volumes of poetry,
fiction, essays, short stories, and plays.
His most recent work to appear in English is The Tuner of
Silences (Biblioasis 2013), translated by David Brookshaw.
For more
information about Mia Couto and The Tuner of Silences, please read on. You may also
listen to a live stage interview, conducted by Eleanor Wachtel of CBC Radio's Writers and Company, as it airs this Sunday June 2nd on CBC Radio One (3 p.m. ET/AT, 3:30
NT, 5 p.m. CT/MT/PT).
For interviews with Mia Couto or
reviews of his work, please visit:
The Paris Review Daily: “We Are Made of
Memories”: Mia Couto in Conversation with Scott Esposito
The New Inquiry: “Feinting
Spells,” by Aaron Bady
The Coffin Factory: Review
Words Without Borders: Review
PRAISE FOR THE
TUNER OF SILENCES
"David Brookshaw's
lyrical translation of Mia Couto's Portuguese lull[s] us into a hypnotized
semi-acceptance of [an] impossible universe … Couto's narrative tone, at once
deadpan and beguiling, and his virtuoso management of time, place him alongside
the best Latin American magic realists." —Times Literary Supplement
"A sad novel of poetic
brilliance—haunting in its human landscape."— The Independent
"Mia Couto, long regarded as one of the leading
writers in Mozambique, has now been recognized as one of the greatest living
writers in the Portuguese language … The Tuner of Silences cracks open a welcoming window
onto a vast world of literary pleasures that has for too long remained under
the radar in the English-speaking world."—Philip Graham, The Millions
ABOUT MIA
COUTO
Mia
Couto,
an environmental biologist from Mozambique, is the author of 25 books of
fiction, essays and poems in his native Portuguese. Couto’s novels and short
story collections have been translated into 20 languages. Two of his novels
have been made into feature films. His work has been awarded important literary
prizes in Mozambique, South Africa, Portugal, Italy and Brazil. His books have
been bestsellers in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Six of Couto’s books have
been translated into English in the United Kingdom: two short story collections
by Heinemann and four novels by Serpent’s Tail. The Tuner of Silences is
his first novel to be published in North America.
ABOUT BIBLIOASIS
Biblioasis is a literary press based in Windsor,
Ontario. Since 2004 we have been publishing the best in Canadian fiction,
non-fiction, poetry, and literature in translation. For more information please
consult our website: www.biblioasis.com.
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