Product Description

"A wonderful mix of magical realism and wordplay that has a similar tone to Márquez at his best. Couto writes in an idiom all his own that feels authentically African."-Ink

In Mozambique after the end of the civil war, local soldiers have been unaccountably blown up. When it begins to happen to UN peacekeepers, a high-level delegation visits the village of Tizangara to initiate an investigation. As the UN investigation unfolds, Mia Couto brilliantly shows how the perceptions of events both inside and outside the country are altered when interpreted from an African perspective.

Mia Couto was born in 1955 in Mozambique and is the most prominent Portuguese-speaking African writer. He now lives in Maputo, where he manages the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #849089 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Booklist
The shocking first sentence is enough to tell you that this will be one strange mystery: "To put it crudely and rudely, here's what happened: a severed penis was found right there on the trunk road just outside Tizangara." UN soldiers in Mozambique have been inexplicably and incredulously exploding, leaving nothing behind but their blue peacekeeper helmets and their "fleshy hyphens." Italian UN official Massimo Risi arrives to investigate this phenomenon, along with his local translator and guide. A bumbling administrator, his haughty wife, and the town's prostitute add flavor to what is essentially the story of a country learning to work the capitalist system ("our destitution is turning a good profit") while trying to keep foreign influence at bay. The surreal haze of folkloric superstitions and raw sensuality akin to Nuruddin Farah's Secrets permeate the tales that the Tizangara translator and narrator collects. Couto creates a striking portrait of postcolonial Africa; unfortunately, his larger messages tend to get sullied with the inherent shock value of his crude plot device. Misha Stone
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Mia Couto was born in 1955 in Mozambique and is the most prominent writer in Portuguese-speaking Africa. He has been active as a journalist and during the revolutionary struggle headed the AIM news agency. He now lives in Maputo where he works as an environmental biologist and runs the Mozambique part of the Kruger National Park.

Customer Reviews

Not as good as his other books
I am a great fan of Mia Couto's books. I love how he is able to take you deep within the social fabric of life in Mozambique this book however I felt fell short. The story is a little confusing and in many parts, pointless it is only at the conclusion of the book you have any idea of what the story was realy about. Unlike his other novels the characters have no appeal nor does the story have anything distinct to make it stand out from his other books; it is almost as if he was running out of ideas with this one.

The horrific wars that took place in Mozambique have been largely overlooked in the West especially the aftermath, a country scared by mines. Something which makes Mia Coutos books all the more powerful.

Try, voices made night. A collection of short stories some of which almost follow the same lines of this one but a whole lot better.

Not a mystery, and certainly not a detective novel
As a crime novel fan as well as a follower of current events in Africa, I was searching for a mystery written by a non-English-speaking African writer, when I stumbled upon The Last Flight of the Flamingo. My urban library system catalogued it as a Detective novel, so I was overjoyed at finding it. But I hadn't read very far into it before becoming utterly bored and irritated. It reads a bit like other African novels I've read, too many of which strive for surrealism while achieving only meandering & verbose confusion. There is no real "mystery" in this novel, only some unexplained deaths; and there is no detection, despite one of the characters being a UN "investigator." Massimo Risi, however, conducts no investigation, and the deaths are "explained" near the end of the book by the sudden, unsupported assertions of the town whore, who is not positioned to have access to this explanation. Only because I am compulsive about finishing what I begin, was I able to complete it [by forcing myself to read a few pages a day]. I wonder if Couto's short stories might be worth trying, and the stage plays made from them might be interesting; but I really think he might be a poet who has chosen the wrong format. Or perhaps he should try painting?