Diogo Santiago is a celebrated Mozambican poet and intellectual, a well-known professor at the university in his country’s capital. In 2019, on the eve of a cyclone that will devastate the East African coast, he returns to his hometown of Beira to receive a tribute from his fellow citizens. As he travels across Mozambique, his mind returns to the past―to his own upbringing, and to the history of his country when it was still a Portuguese colony.
Diogo’s father, himself a poet and a journalist, observed a terrible massacre committed during the waning days of the Estado Novo and was persecuted by the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police. Diogo’s reflections on his father’s life are interspersed with found documents―letters, stories, entries in the journal kept by the PIDE agent who oversaw the case. As Cyclone Idai approaches Beira, threatening to wipe away the physical traces of the world in which he grew up, Diogo is forced to confront the impermanence of his own memories, too.
A haunting novel of historical witness, The Cartographer of Absences is one of Mia Couto’s finest works. Drawing on the author’s own life in colonial Mozambique, this book is a significant new entry in the world literature canon.
“In its temporally fragmented structure and use of found documents, Mia Couto’s newly translated novel feels like a new direction for him. It’s also an intensely powerful work about revolution, compromise, and long-buried secrets―one that both explores Mozambique’s troubled colonial history and raises big questions about ideals and sacrifice. A haunting, compelling book.” ―Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
“In the rich latest from Couto, a poet reckons with the colonial history of Mozambique . . . Revelations of murder and suicide shade the final act, which is made all the more gripping by a cyclone bearing down on the country. This packs a punch.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Couto’s storytelling is rich, while delivering a straightforward message: ‘When a regime starts arresting poets it is because that regime has lost its way’ . . . A contemplative study of colonialism’s collapse, and its enduring legacy.” ―Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Mia Couto, born in Beira, Mozambique, in 1955, is one of the most prominent writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa. After studying medicine and biology in Maputo, he worked as a journalist and headed several Mozambican national newspapers and magazines. Couto has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Camões Prize (the most prestigious Portuguese-language award), the Prémio Vergílio Ferreira, the Prémio União Latina de Literaturas Românicas, and the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages. He lives in Maputo, where he works as a biologist.
About the Translator
David Brookshaw is Professor Emeritus of Lusophone Studies at the University of Bristol, England. Many of his translations include Mia Couto’s recent novels Woman of the Ashes and The Sword and the Spear, as well as earlier Couto novels such as The Tuner of Silences, Sleepwalking Land, and Under the Frangipani. He has translated widely from the literatures of Lusophone Asia and the Azores Islands.
Book Review
“The Cartographer of Absences” Is a Mystery and a Revelation – by Carl Hoffman – Washington Post
Book Details
Title: The Cartographer of Absences: A Novel
Author: Mia Couto
Translator: David Brookshaw
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: September 30, 2025
Language: English
Hardcover: 320 pages
Available @ Amazon.com
