Spaces of violence in the contemporary Mozambican narrative

Abstract

In 2003 João Paulo Borges Coelho published his first novel, As duas sombras do rio, based on true events occurred on the banks of the Zambezi river between 1985 and 1989. Being a historian, specializing in security and defense issues, the author has a privileged position regarding access to information, which would initially lead one to perceive it as a historical narrative or documentary. Nevertheless the univocal reading of the narrative as a report is avoided, and the perception of the exposed violence is brought to a field of uncertainty and questioning -- which was developed by the author in his subsequent novel Campo de Trânsito, whose action takes place in a prison camp. One can draw analogies between those two narratives through the philosophical perspective provided by Emmanuel Levinas.