Biography

Luís Bernado Honwana was born Luís Augusto Bernardo Manuel in Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo

Maputo

Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...

), Mozambique. His parents, Raúl Bernardo Manuel (Honwana) and Naly Jeremias Nhaca, belonged to the Ronga people from Moamba, a town about 55 km northwest of Maputo.

He studied law in Portugal and worked for some time as a journalist. He was appointed director of President's office under Samora Machel

Samora Machel

Samora Moisés Machel was a Mozambican military commander, revolutionary socialist leader and eventual President of Mozambique...

. Later in 1981, he became Secretary of State for culture. He served on the Executive Board of UNESCO from 1987 to 1991 and was chairman of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for the World Decade for Culture and Development. In 1995, he was appointed director of the newly opened UNESCO office in South Africa. Since he retired from the organization in 2002, he has been active in research in the arts, history and ethno-linguistics.

Works

Honwana is the author of a single book, Nós Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso (1964), translated into English as We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories

We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories

We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Mozambique Stories is a collection of short stories by Mozambican writer Luís Bernardo Honwana...

, and the tale "Hands of the Blacks". This work has proved enormously influential and a case can be made for it being the touchstone of contemporary Mozambican narrative. We Killed Mangy Dog is a collection of short stories set in the (Portuguese) colonial era at the turn of the sixties and is reflective of the harsh life black Mozambicans lived under the Salazar regime

António de Oliveira Salazar

António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...

. Several of the stories are told from the point of view of children or alienated adolescents and most feature the rich mix of races, religions and ethnicities that would later preoccupy Mozambique's most internationally celebrated writer, Mia Couto

Mia Couto

António Emílio Leite Couto , better known as Mia Couto, is a world-renowned Mozambican writer.-Early years:Couto was born in the city of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city, where he was also raised and schooled. He is the son of Portuguese emigrants who moved to the former Portuguese colony in...

.