El río de la ceguera

In August 1914, the First World War reached Africa when Germany attacked the outpost of Madziwa, a border village on the Rovuma River in Mozambique. Its waters, disputed by the German and Portuguese armies, became the setting for a mysterious episode: the spread of a strange disease that began to affect only the colonizers, depriving them of the ability to read and write. Soon, no invader could decipher the world through writing, and books, reports, documents, photographs, and maps seemed faded to them. Threatened by German power and subjugated by Portuguese colonization, the people of Mozambique found refuge in that which is impossible to erase: ancestral knowledge passed down orally. But what would Westerners do in the face of this reversal of roles? With the tenderness and originality that characterize Mia Couto, The River of Blindness offers a keen insight into memory, culture, and the human capacity to face adversity with hope.