The Tuner of Silences

Finalist for 2015 Man Booker International Prize

“Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa.""—Doris Lessing 

“By meshing the richness of African beliefs . . . into the Western framework of the novel, he creates a mysterious & surreal epic.”—Henning Mankell

Mwanito was eleven when he saw a woman for the first time, & the sight so surprised him he burst into tears. Mwanito has been living in a former big-game park for eight years. The only people he knows are his father, his brother, an uncle, & a servant. He’s been told that the rest of the world is dead, that all roads are sad, that they wait for an apology from God. In the place his father calls Jezoosalem, Mwanito has been told that crying & praying are the same thing. Both, it seems, are forbidden.

The eighth novel by the internationally bestselling Mia Couto, The Tuner of Silences is the story of Mwanito’s struggle to reconstruct a family history that his father is unable to discuss. With the young woman’s arrival in Jezoosalem, however, the silence of the past quickly breaks down, & both his father’s story & the world are heard once more.

The Tuner of Silences has been published to acclaim in more than half a dozen countries. Now in its first English translation, this story of an African boy's quest for the truth endures as a magical, humanizing confrontation between one child & the legacy of war.

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Mia Couto was born in Beira, Mozambique, in 1955. He is the author of more than 25 books of fiction, essays & poems. His novels & short story collections have been made into feature films. In 2015, he was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. His novel The Tuner of Silences was longlisted for the 2015 IMPAC Dublin Award, while Confession of the Lioness was shortlisted for the Award in 2017.