Sands of the Emperor

The first in a trilogy about the last emperor of southern Mozambique by one of Africa's most important writers. Southern Mozambique, 1894. Sergeant Germano de Melo is posted to the village of Nkokolani to oversee the Portuguese conquest of territory claimed by Ngungunyane, the last of the leaders of the state of Gaza, the second-largest empire led by an African. Ngungunyane has raised an army to resist colonial rule and with his warriors is slowly approaching the border village. Desperate for help, Germano enlists Imani, a fifteen-year-old girl, to act as his interpreter. She belongs to the VaChopi tribe, one of the few who dared side with the Portuguese. But while one of her brothers fights for the Crown of Portugal, the other has chosen the African emperor. Standing astride two kingdoms, Imani is drawn to Germano, just as he is drawn to her. But she knows that in a country haunted by violence, the only way out for a woman is to go unnoticed, as if made of shadows or ashes. Alternating between the voices of Imani and Germano, Mia Couto's “Woman of the Ashes” combines vivid folkloric prose with extensive historical research to give a spellbinding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century.

The scintillating conclusion to the critically acclaimed historical saga: the Jan Michalski Prize—winning Sands of the Emperor trilogy. In “The Drinker of Horizons”, the award-winning author Mia Couto brings the epic love story between a young Mozambican woman named Imani and the Portuguese sergeant Germano de Melo to its stirring close. We resume where The Sword and the Spear left off: While Germano is left behind in Africa, serving with the Portuguese military, Imani has been enlisted to act as the interpreter to the imprisoned emperor of Gaza, Ngungunyane, on the long voyage to Lisbon. For Ngungunyane and his seven wives, it will be a journey of no return. Imani's will come only after a decade-long odyssey through the Portuguese empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. If history is always narrated by the victors, in “The Drinker of Horiozons”, Couto performs an act of restorative justice, giving a voice to those silenced by the horrors of colonialism. Throughout, Couto's language astonishes, rendering with utter clarity the beauty and terror of war and love, and revealing the devastation of a profoundly unequal encounter between cultures.