A River Called Time - Tapa blanda

Mia Couto from Mozambique has witnessed his country's tumultous struggle for independence, the drama of revolution, and a protracted civil war as a journalist and editor, a poet and novelist, and an environmental biologist. His novels bind national history to ancestral mythology. They are a vindication of how oral legends can be received in any language...
The story of the home is told in desperate cries, seductive whispers and childish laughter. The novel has much to teach about patriarchy and change in a pre-industrial, post- revolutionary society. It shares, with the best fiction, mystery and revelation. A River called Time transports the reader to an island in which past, present and future co-exist, and the dead retain a vociferous presence.

Mariano, who has lived in the city from an early age, is summoned back to his village to attend his grandfather's funeral. But when he arrives, he discovers two things: firstly, that he has been nominated by his grandfather to take over the running of the family affairs, secondly that his grandfather has not died completely, but is in that frontier space between life and death. In traditional belief, he has died 'badly', and something must happen in order for him to be laid to rest.

Mariano starts to receive letters supposedly written by his grandfather, telling him about the family. It is through this strange relationship that he discovers the secret of his own birth, while also cleansing his grandfather's conscience. The novel contains a blend of picturesque and sometimes comic characters and situations.