Reviewed by Miranda A. Aysanabee
Shakespeare’s Juliet said it best: What’s in a name? The title of Mia Couto’s novel and the names of his characters matter. The title has great significance because Mwanito, the protagonist, plays the role of being a “tuner of silences” as a child and on into manhood. In Portuguese the title of this novel was Jesusalém, but in English translation it became A Tuner of Silences.
Mia Couto’s own name is not well known in North America, but it should be, because he is a powerful storyteller in any language. Couto captivates the reader’s attention by telling a story of family, love or lack of it, and the effects of war.
Family life is disrupted by a death early in Mwanito’s life in Mozambique. He never got to know his mother. She is a constant presence because those who knew her are forever changed, but cannot live with her memory. They avoid her name like it was a disease, because the adults in this story harbour guilt. The mother’s death has the greatest impact in the story.
Mwanito is still a boy when he learns about the burial of his mother from his brother Ntunzi and the soldier Zachary Kalash: “‘Burial’ is merely a term that is used for there’s never enough earth to bury a mother.” The whole truth is kept from Mwanito. It takes Mwanito’s entire youth to know about the violence his mother experienced when she was brutally raped and later committed suicide.
Mia Couto was born in Mozambique. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and sold more than 25 million copies. He’s considered the pioneer of African magic realism. ‘A Tuner of Silences’ takes place in Mozambique. It was written in Portuguese and translated into English by David Brookshaw. The original title perhaps suggested a religious overtone to this story, but without it we can see traces of such themes in Vitalicio’s quasi-shrine at the entrance to Mwanito’s camp, for example. One thing to note is that there’s no use of quotation marks, which emphasises the silence in the novel’s title, suggesting that all dialogue may be internal. Other books Couto has written and which were also translated by Brookshaw include The Last Flight of the Flamingo and Sleepwalking Land.
Everyone has a mother, but not everyone loses a mother at a young age. In my own life losing a mother was the hardest thing when trying to find out who you are, and Couto’s novel really tugs at my heart strings for this reason. Mwanito was too young to know his mother and is lost without her in a sense that the only remaining pieces of her come through his brother and the soldier, because his father has banned all mention of her.
The other characters in this story include Mwanito’s father, brother, uncle, and a soldier from the ‘Colonial War.’ They are all men who have each shown Mwanito a cruel world without women and memories. Couto`s portrayals are intense, because love in such circumstances is intense and hard to grasp. The characters have deep scars and it is by these scars Couto lets us meet them: “… if you want to know a man, take a look at his scars.” The soldier Zachary Kalash has four bullet wounds, three of which he told Mwanito and his older brother Ntunzi about many times, but there is one scar, the one on his shoulder that he never remembers. It is a secret that’s a part of the past in Jezoosalem, the story’s setting in a camp in the Mozambican jungle. The past is one of many things that are forbidden. Emotional scars are kept secret.
Couto shows the past does not always stay neatly in place. To move forward the past has to be left behind, but the characters in this story never settle that history with its hardships and disputes, and so it keeps pushing into the present. Silvestre Vitalicio is the patriarch of the group, the father of Mwanito and Ntunzi. This story is a telling, but Couto also makes it a haunting. The past with its colonial wars has left the land desolate and with no people, says Vitalicio. And indeed, Zachary Kalash’s one bullet wound is from the war against Ian Smith’s racist white government.
Again, what’s in a name? The name Vitalicio definitely stands out because he is the patriarch and the giver of life. It stands out all the more because this name as well as Ntunzi’s and Zachary’s are not their birth names. Jezoosalem represents a rebirth of their lives and so Vitalicio gives them life and new names. Even the uncle’s name Approximado is not his real name. The only real name is Mwanito, a symbol in itself because he is innocent and the favourite of Vitalicio. The past is staring Vitalicio right in the face, yet Mwanito is the favourite and Ntunzi knows this, and we find out the secret why. The brothers Mwanito and Ntunzi have never known any other life than what their father has told and given them. Many things, including names and memories, are forbidden by the father, who has guilt about the past and how he treated his wife that affects the present in terms of how he raises Mwanito.
Couto gives us the struggle of silence. If one is meant to sing, pray, cry, and simply to talk, there is only so long a time that one can be silent. Tune out these and you might as well tune out life. Mwanito, Ntunzi, and Zachary Kalash are forbidden by Vitalicio to sing, pray, cry and talk about certain things. There was once a time before Jezoosalem and all the secrecy that Vitalicio would tell stories and encourage Ntunzi to do so as well, but Vitalicio has left the madness of the city for a new one.
Ntunzi, trying to be a big brother, still tells stories to Mwanito, but one day the isolation proves too much: “In this world there are the living and the dead. And then there’s us, the ones who have no journey to make.” Mwanito knows a story must have feeling, or how else is one supposed to learn to love.
All is about to change from Uncle Approximado and Mwanito’s meeting of the first woman he’s ever seen, Marta. Vitalicio is changing too, but still cannot face the past and all the secrets it holds, “Time is a poison . . .The more I remember, the less alive I become.” He cannot face Marta with the questions and memories she brings flooding to the present.
A woman: her body, her feelings, her womb, I believe are great symbols deployed by Couto. Water, like a womb is shown throughout as a symbol of a woman. The once nameless river is to bathe, to weep and pray because it is pure and living. Marta brings a whole new world to this land of men. Mwanito is in awe of her,
… the woman had invaded me… no way of avoiding or obstructing this flood… Ntunzi was right when he warned me: water has nothing to learn from anyone. It’s like women: they just know things. Inexplicable things. That’s why we need to fear both creatures: women and water.
Vitalicio knows the power of women too well and fears it. Marta knows too and that men can be scared, “… of what they may find in the depth of woman’s eyes.” Couto gives women power like water. Women have the power to destroy with their love in the example of Dordalma, while men destroy with their wars without being able to love.
Reading this story brought to my mind A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, a memoir of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. Truth is often strange. Both stories concern young African boys. In A Long Way Gone, the boy is involved in a war with its cruelties and horrific violence, while Couto’s fictional protagonist Mwanito is removed from war. Both boys are victims of violence and were unable to be children, and so they have lost their innocence at young ages. There is no going back. Too much has happened. The surreal has become their reality. Both these books are stories of adversity and exploring your identity.
The larger setting is Africa, a place that knows many wars. For a family to leave violence this setting of isolation in Couto’s novel proves more believable for the land of Jezoosalem because Vitalicio wanted to escape the city. In Canada’s recent history, we have gone away to fight wars, while outside of Jezoosalem wars are fought right at home. Zachary Kalash says, “My whole life has been lived in war. Here is where I found peace for the first time.”
Even though Mwanito starts out young in the narrative, this isn’t a child`s book. Mwanito is a boy who has never been a child. “My son, I feel so guilty. You’re so old. You’re as old as I am.” Vitalicio thought he was protecting his son, but instead he hid the world from him. Mwanito is the tuner of silences, the quiet in his father`s too-loud mind.
Biblioasis | 224 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1926845951
‘A Tuner of Silences’ by Mia Couto, trans. David Brookshaw
Book Reviews
Shakespeare’s Juliet said it best: What’s in a name? The title of Mia Couto’s novel and the names of his characters matter. The title has great significance because Mwanito, the protagonist, plays the role of being a “tuner of silences” as a child and on into manhood. In Portuguese the title of this novel was Jesusalém, but in English translation it became A Tuner of Silences.
Mia Couto’s own name is not well known in North America, but it should be, because he is a powerful storyteller in any language. Couto captivates the reader’s attention by telling a story of family, love or lack of it, and the effects of war.
Family life is disrupted by a death early in Mwanito’s life in Mozambique. He never got to know his mother. She is a constant presence because those who knew her are forever changed, but cannot live with her memory. They avoid her name like it was a disease, because the adults in this story harbour guilt. The mother’s death has the greatest impact in the story.
Mwanito is still a boy when he learns about the burial of his mother from his brother Ntunzi and the soldier Zachary Kalash: “‘Burial’ is merely a term that is used for there’s never enough earth to bury a mother.” The whole truth is kept from Mwanito. It takes Mwanito’s entire youth to know about the violence his mother experienced when she was brutally raped and later committed suicide.
Mia Couto was born in Mozambique. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and sold more than 25 million copies. He’s considered the pioneer of African magic realism. ‘A Tuner of Silences’ takes place in Mozambique. It was written in Portuguese and translated into English by David Brookshaw. The original title perhaps suggested a religious overtone to this story, but without it we can see traces of such themes in Vitalicio’s quasi-shrine at the entrance to Mwanito’s camp, for example. One thing to note is that there’s no use of quotation marks, which emphasises the silence in the novel’s title, suggesting that all dialogue may be internal. Other books Couto has written and which were also translated by Brookshaw include The Last Flight of the Flamingo and Sleepwalking Land.
Everyone has a mother, but not everyone loses a mother at a young age. In my own life losing a mother was the hardest thing when trying to find out who you are, and Couto’s novel really tugs at my heart strings for this reason. Mwanito was too young to know his mother and is lost without her in a sense that the only remaining pieces of her come through his brother and the soldier, because his father has banned all mention of her.
The other characters in this story include Mwanito’s father, brother, uncle, and a soldier from the ‘Colonial War.’ They are all men who have each shown Mwanito a cruel world without women and memories. Couto`s portrayals are intense, because love in such circumstances is intense and hard to grasp. The characters have deep scars and it is by these scars Couto lets us meet them: “… if you want to know a man, take a look at his scars.” The soldier Zachary Kalash has four bullet wounds, three of which he told Mwanito and his older brother Ntunzi about many times, but there is one scar, the one on his shoulder that he never remembers. It is a secret that’s a part of the past in Jezoosalem, the story’s setting in a camp in the Mozambican jungle. The past is one of many things that are forbidden. Emotional scars are kept secret.
Couto shows the past does not always stay neatly in place. To move forward the past has to be left behind, but the characters in this story never settle that history with its hardships and disputes, and so it keeps pushing into the present. Silvestre Vitalicio is the patriarch of the group, the father of Mwanito and Ntunzi. This story is a telling, but Couto also makes it a haunting. The past with its colonial wars has left the land desolate and with no people, says Vitalicio. And indeed, Zachary Kalash’s one bullet wound is from the war against Ian Smith’s racist white government.
Again, what’s in a name? The name Vitalicio definitely stands out because he is the patriarch and the giver of life. It stands out all the more because this name as well as Ntunzi’s and Zachary’s are not their birth names. Jezoosalem represents a rebirth of their lives and so Vitalicio gives them life and new names. Even the uncle’s name Approximado is not his real name. The only real name is Mwanito, a symbol in itself because he is innocent and the favourite of Vitalicio. The past is staring Vitalicio right in the face, yet Mwanito is the favourite and Ntunzi knows this, and we find out the secret why. The brothers Mwanito and Ntunzi have never known any other life than what their father has told and given them. Many things, including names and memories, are forbidden by the father, who has guilt about the past and how he treated his wife that affects the present in terms of how he raises Mwanito.
Couto gives us the struggle of silence. If one is meant to sing, pray, cry, and simply to talk, there is only so long a time that one can be silent. Tune out these and you might as well tune out life. Mwanito, Ntunzi, and Zachary Kalash are forbidden by Vitalicio to sing, pray, cry and talk about certain things. There was once a time before Jezoosalem and all the secrecy that Vitalicio would tell stories and encourage Ntunzi to do so as well, but Vitalicio has left the madness of the city for a new one.
Ntunzi, trying to be a big brother, still tells stories to Mwanito, but one day the isolation proves too much: “In this world there are the living and the dead. And then there’s us, the ones who have no journey to make.” Mwanito knows a story must have feeling, or how else is one supposed to learn to love.
All is about to change from Uncle Approximado and Mwanito’s meeting of the first woman he’s ever seen, Marta. Vitalicio is changing too, but still cannot face the past and all the secrets it holds, “Time is a poison . . .The more I remember, the less alive I become.” He cannot face Marta with the questions and memories she brings flooding to the present.
A woman: her body, her feelings, her womb, I believe are great symbols deployed by Couto. Water, like a womb is shown throughout as a symbol of a woman. The once nameless river is to bathe, to weep and pray because it is pure and living. Marta brings a whole new world to this land of men. Mwanito is in awe of her,
… the woman had invaded me… no way of avoiding or obstructing this flood… Ntunzi was right when he warned me: water has nothing to learn from anyone. It’s like women: they just know things. Inexplicable things. That’s why we need to fear both creatures: women and water.
Vitalicio knows the power of women too well and fears it. Marta knows too and that men can be scared, “… of what they may find in the depth of woman’s eyes.” Couto gives women power like water. Women have the power to destroy with their love in the example of Dordalma, while men destroy with their wars without being able to love.
Reading this story brought to my mind A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, a memoir of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. Truth is often strange. Both stories concern young African boys. In A Long Way Gone, the boy is involved in a war with its cruelties and horrific violence, while Couto’s fictional protagonist Mwanito is removed from war. Both boys are victims of violence and were unable to be children, and so they have lost their innocence at young ages. There is no going back. Too much has happened. The surreal has become their reality. Both these books are stories of adversity and exploring your identity.
The larger setting is Africa, a place that knows many wars. For a family to leave violence this setting of isolation in Couto’s novel proves more believable for the land of Jezoosalem because Vitalicio wanted to escape the city. In Canada’s recent history, we have gone away to fight wars, while outside of Jezoosalem wars are fought right at home. Zachary Kalash says, “My whole life has been lived in war. Here is where I found peace for the first time.”
Even though Mwanito starts out young in the narrative, this isn’t a child`s book. Mwanito is a boy who has never been a child. “My son, I feel so guilty. You’re so old. You’re as old as I am.” Vitalicio thought he was protecting his son, but instead he hid the world from him. Mwanito is the tuner of silences, the quiet in his father`s too-loud mind.
Biblioasis | 224 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1926845951