Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican writer Mia Couto has won the PEN/Nabokov 2025 Prize on Friday, becoming the first Portuguese-language author to be honoured with this PEN America award for international literature, the publishing house Caminho revealed.
PEN America”is awarding “the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature to eminent Mozambican author Mia Couto for his body of work. Couto is acclaimed for novels including his breakthrough Sleepwalking Land (1992), Confession of the Lioness (2012), and, most recently, the Sands of the Emperor trilogy (2015, 2016, and 2018), which was short-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2015.,” reads the statement from PEN America, quoted by the publisher.
The PEN/Nabokov jury cited Mia Couto for probing his homeland’s fraught history “as well as essential riddles of identity and existence.”
Mia Couto, who writes in Portuguese, has held “a singular place in the landscape o f both African and world literature”, adds the jury.
The PEN/Nabokov Prize for International Literature, worth US$50,000 (around €45,000), is awarded annually by PEN America, in collaboration with the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation, to a living author whose body of work, written or translated into English, represents the highest level of achievement in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and/or drama, according to information on the award’s official website.
The prize celebrates authors whose work demonstrates “enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship”, evoking the versatility and commitment to literature characteristic of Vladimir Nabokov’s writing, it adds.
Established in 2016, the prize has previously honoured writers Maryse Conde, Vinod Kumar Shukla, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Anne Carson, M. NourbeSe Philip, Sandra Cisneros, Edna O’Brien and Adonis.
In September last year, Mia Couto was awarded the FIL (Guadalajara International Book Fair) Prize for Literature in Romance Languages 2024.
Mia Couto was born in Beira, Mozambique, in 1955, worked as a journalist and teacher, and is currently a biologist and writer.
Awarded the Camões Prize in 2013, Mia Couto is the author, among others, of ‘Jesusalém’, ‘O Último Voo do Flamingo’, ‘Vozes Anoitecidas’, ‘Estórias Abensonhadas’, ‘Terra Sonâmbula’, ‘A Varanda do Frangipani’ and ‘A Confissão da Leoa’.
Translated into more than 30 languages, the writer was also honoured with the Vergílio Ferreira Prize in 1999, the Latin Union Prize for Romance Literature in 2007 and the Eduardo Lourenço Prize in 2011 for his work as a whole, among other distinctions.
‘Terra Sonâmbula’ was voted one of the 12 best African books of the 20th century, and “Jesusalém” was among the 20 best fiction books published in France, as chosen by Radio France Culture and Télérama magazine.
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