The "sleepwalking" of the title refers to a nation and a people wandering through a nightmare, trying to remember who they were before the violence. Literary Significance
Couto blends harsh, gritty realism with African myths and dreamlike sequences. This style allows him to depict the "unthinkable" horrors of war while maintaining a sense of hope and spiritual depth.
The novel is set against the backdrop of the Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992), a brutal conflict that devastated the country following its independence from Portugal. Couto, who is also a biologist and former journalist, uses the novel to explore the deep psychological and cultural scars left by colonial rule and the subsequent internal strife.
Writing in Portuguese, Couto is famous for "reinventing" the language by infusing it with Mozambican oral traditions, local dialects, and poetic neologisms.