We Killed Mangy-Dog & Other Stories     by Luis Bernardo Honwana, Translated by Dorothy Guedes Original title: Nós Matamos O Cão-Tinhoso Original language: Portuguese Country: Mozambique   Published by Heinemann African Writers Pub. Date: 1969 Pub. Place: UK Format: 117 pages List Price: £4.99 Not available for ordering

These are stories from Mozambique, where Portuguese is still an important language of literature and administration. Set in the colonial era — extended until 1975 by the Salazar regime’s refusal to accept political independence — they reflect some of the harsh ways of that time. In Dina, apart from the shocking cruelty, with its echoes of slavery, in the life of field labourers under a brutal white overseer, there is something else; the marvellous smell of Africa, its rich soil and the hours of intense heat.


Honwana is a gifted writer delivering authentic fragments of a time and place. Written while he was still in his twenties he demonstrates a kind of wise authorial detachment unusual at that age; in the story Hands of the Blacks he gives us a funny, unbitter record of the everyday racism of colonial society. Nevertheless he doesn’t pander either to a sentimental vision of ‘traditional Africa’ but deals with the lives of mineworkers returned from years in the Republic of South Africa; hardened men who play cards in bars, fight, drink and fornicate.


Disturbing, well-written, truthful stories, where you hear the true voices of the people of Mozambique.

‘A wide veil of mist covered the lands of the chief Goana. The finest threads of vapour surrounded the trees, the houses and the animals in a blue halo without, however, leaving any signs of humidity on the surface. From above the tree tops the mist was pierced by the first rays of the sun, and turned to gold before dissolving in the heat. Greeting the day, the sounds of the bush, like harsh, strident yawns, zigzagged lazily from leaf to leaf, and echoed dully until they lost themselves in the depths of the veil of the mist. A strong smell of clay rose from the earth, mingled with the acrid vapours of the swamp and the fragrances of the forest, then attached itself to the droplets of the blue veil and dissolved up above, in the air now intensely golden in the rising sun.’ pp66-67