Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa
Encyclopedia
Francisco Esaú Cossa is a Mozambican
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

 writer born August 1, 1957, in Inhaminga, Sofala Province
Sofala Province
Sofala is a province of Mozambique. It has an area of 68,018 km² and a population of 1.676.131 . Beira is the capital of the province. The province is named for the ruined port of Sofala.- Districts :Districts of Sofala Province include:...

.
Khosa completed elementary school in Sofala, and high school in Zambezia. In 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...

 he attended Eduardo Mondlane University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in History and Geography. He then worked as a high school teacher.

In 1982, Khosa worked for the Ministry of Education for over a year. Six months after leaving the Ministry of Education, he was invited to work for the Writer’s Association.
He initiated his career as a writer with the publication of several short stories and was one of the founders of the magazine Charrua of the Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos (AEMO). It was his experiences in Niassa and Cabo Delgado, where poorly organized reeducation camps were located, that gave him the urge to write and expose this reality.

Literary Influences

  • Ernest Hemingway
    Ernest Hemingway
    Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

  • William Faulkner
    William Faulkner
    William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

  • Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

  • Gabriel García Márquez
    Gabriel García Márquez
    Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...

  • Mario Vargas Llosa
    Mario Vargas Llosa
    Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...

  • Ousmane Sembène
    Ousmane Sembène
    Ousmane Sembène , often credited in the French style as Sembène Ousmane in articles and reference works, was a Senegalese film director, producer and writer...

  • Mongo Beti
    Mongo Beti
    Alexandre Biyidi Awala , known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer.- Life :Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country...

  • Chinua Achebe
    Chinua Achebe
    Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...

  • Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
    Ngugi wa Thiong'o
    Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature...


Awards

  • Won the Grand Prize of Mozambican Fiction in 1990 with Ualalapi
  • In 2002 Ualalapi
    Ualalapi
    Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa is a Mozambican writer. He published two books: the novel Ualalapi in 1987 and a collection of short stories Orgy of the Deranged in 1990...

    was considered one of the best 100 African books of the twentieth century.
  • In 2007 Khosa won the José Craveirinha Award for his book Os Sobreviventes da Noite.

Published works

  • Ualalapi
    Ualalapi
    Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa is a Mozambican writer. He published two books: the novel Ualalapi in 1987 and a collection of short stories Orgy of the Deranged in 1990...

    (1987)

Ualalapi is the name of a warrior nguni
Nguni people
-History:The ancient history of the Nguni people is wrapped up in their oral history. According to legend they were a people who migrated from Egypt to the Great Lakes region of sub-equatorial Central/East Africa...

 who is destined to kill Mafemane, brother of Mudungazi (later called Ngungunhane). This fictional story, a collection of six loosely related episodes, describes the life of hosi (king
King
- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...

, emperor
Emperor
An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...

, in the Tsonga language
Tsonga language
The Tsonga or Xitsonga language is spoken in southern Africa by the Tsonga people, also known as the Shangaan.- Classification :Tsonga belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger–Congo languages...

) Ngungunhane, celebrity of the resistance to the Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 at the end of nineteenth century. Ualalapi´s telling of the story creates an epic ambience; however, an oral tradition describes the emperor as a tyrant rather than a hero. The author tracks Ngungunhane's rise to power over his murdered rivals and his eventual decline. The story is a disguised warning against tyranny. The book is not yet translated into English. It is available only in Portuguese. In 2002, Ualalapi was announced by a panel of judges in Accra
Accra
Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...

, Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

 as one of Africa's 100 best books of the twentieth century.
  • Orgia dos loucos (1990)
  • Histórias de amor e espanto (1999)
  • No reino dos abutres (2002)
  • Os sobreviventes da noite (2005)

External links

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