Analysis Of Mia Couto's The Last Flight Of The Flamingo

In Mia Couto's novel, The Last Flight of the Flamingo, he uses epigraphs as an introduction to each of the 21 chapters. Additionally, there is one before the prologue. Epigraphs are one of the key tools a writer could use to communicate directly to the reader, apart from the main content. As a method of foreshadowing, they enhance what is important, so that the reader knows what to pay attention to in the following chapter. Usually they require some sort of contextual understanding, such as through maintained literary analysis. More commonly one can see that many authors include the epigraphs for second-time readers (or third, etc.), because when you already know the story it would be easier to appreciate the references. In The Last Flight of the Flamingo, the epigraphs are predominantly made up of sayings. Some of them are credited as being specific to Tizangara, in other words established to be fictional, while others are presented as real-world proverbs. While

Well, look in the warmest corner. (Proverb)" and "If you want to see in the night/rinse your eyes with the water/where the cat washed its eyes. (A saying from Tizangara)" (p. 103). Reading this, one can think of the cat as a representation of the locals in the village. In the second saying, the author refers to foreigners (as Sulplício lovingly calls them: evil white bastards) trying to understand their culture by living like locals and acting like them, trying to see the world through their eyes. Throughout the book Massimo Risi's character develops the ability to do this, together with the readers. Some of the epigraphs are made up of conversations or quotations directly from the characters. An example of this is an excerpt from a dialogue between Anna Godwilling and the Italian as a preface to chapter 7: –I miss my home, back in