Mia Couto: Memória e «tradução cultural» em O último voo do flamingo

Abstract

My reading follows the challenge the reader is confronted with, as a sort of enigma, at the beginning of the novel: «did the [UN] soldiers die? Were they killed?». Looking for an answer, it ponders those issues of life and death posed by the fictive world of Tizangara. Those concepts are understood by taking into account not only Walter Benjamin’s positions, in his Critique of Violence, but also the thoughts of both Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida. They are helpfull to grasp what is at stake, from the vantage point of an ethical and political critique of violence, not only for father Muhando — the character that is the organizing principle of the entire plot, and whose vision seems to be heavily influenced by judaism — but also for key-characters such as the wizard Zeca Andorinho and the old Sulplício being, both belonging to the circle of those that are closer to him.