The man, Tuahir, had found him abandoned in the refugee camp, and taken him under his wing when no one else would. The boy, Muidinga, was recovering from a terrible illness that left him all but dead. The two travellers matched the road, withered and devoid of hope.

They advance under the illusion that somewhere beyond there lies a safe country. They are fleeing the war, the war that has contaminated their whole country. Their destination is the other side of nowhere, their arrival a non-departure, awaiting what lies ahead. They walk with swaying gait, as if journeying has been their only occupation since birth. Opening the novel with a young boy and an old man on the road, Coutu writes in images. As usual, it was everyday people who suffered most. The civil war which followed held no such promise. Mozambique's FRELIMO led War of Independence against Portugal was bad enough, but at least it held out the hope of a better future for the people. In 2014 he received the $50,000 Neustadt Prize for Literature, and in 2015 he was shortlistedfor the Man Booker International Prize. In 2007 he was the first African author to win the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages in 2013 he was awarded the e100,000 Camões Prize for Literature, in recognition of his life's work. He now lives in Maputo where he works as an environmental biologist and heads the Mozambique side of the Limpopo Transnational Park.

Born in 1955 in Mozambique,Mia Couto ran the AIM news agency during the revolutionary struggle.

Written in 1992, Mia Couto's first novel is a powerful indictment of the suffering war brings. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. 'On almost every page of this witty magical realist whodunit, we sense Couto's delight on those places where language slips officialdom's asphyxiating grasp.'- The New York Times Book Review on The Last Flight of the Flamingo 'The most prominent of the younger generation of writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa, Couto passionately and sensitively describes everyday life in poverty-stricken Mozambique.'- Guardian (London) 'Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa.'-Doris Lessing As the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus.

Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto