A dark, poetic mystery about the women of the remote village of Kulumani and the lionesses that hunt them
Told through two haunting, interwoven diaries, Mia Couto's Confession of the Lioness reveals the mysterious world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting the women who live there.
Mariamar, a woman whose sister was killed in a lioness attack, finds her life thrown into chaos when the outsider Archangel Bullseye, the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, arrives at the request of the village elders. Mariamar's father imprisons her in her home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel tracks the lionesses in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to them than meets the eye, he starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more dangerous, until it's no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their traditional culture, and the danger of their animal predators closing in, it becomes clear the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all but spirits conjured by the ancient witchcraft of the women themselves.
Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women's oppression, Confession of the Lioness explores the confrontation between the modern world and ancient traditions to produce an atmospheric, gripping novel.
Industry Reviews
"Masterfully wrought . . . Confession of the Lioness sings with the musical nuance of a poem." --Heather Scott Partington, Los Angeles Times"Couto's work doesn't so much blur the generic and stylistic boundaries we normally draw as explode them . . . Confession of the Lioness reads as a parable of human savagery and its consequences. It shows how humans might transform, literally and metaphorically, into animals; how violence, once committed, takes on an independent and inexorable life." --Anthony Domestico, The Boston Globe"Myths, magic, tradition and reality intersect to the extent that it becomes difficult to tell them apart. . . [Couto's] magical realism is never too cute, instead leaning toward a dispassionate, documentary portrayal of unlikely interpretations of ugly events" --Dave Burdick, The Denver Post"It's an old-fashioned tale whose earthy wisdom and shimmering magic will make you want to discover more of Couto's work." --Nicole Jones, Vanity Fair"A meditation on the nature of memory . . . [Couto is] a brilliant aphorist. There are countless sentences that, in David Brookshaw's clean-cut translation from the Portuguese, have the weight and wisdom of ancient proverbs." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal"A rich tale in which the spirit world is made real, animals are controlled by people, and dead ancestors are feared for their power to destroy cities. Couto also manages to explore the clash of disparate belief systems-tribal, Islam, Christian-in postcolonial Africa and deftly weaves in a critique of the embedded patriarchy" --Kirkus Reviews"Couto weaves a surreal mystery of humanity against nature, men against women, and tradition against modernity." --Publishers Weekly"Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women's oppression, Confession of the Lioness explores the confrontation between the modern world and ancient traditions to produce an atmospheric, gripping novel." --Carolina Matos, Portuguese American Journal
