As duas sombras do rio: a cisão como herança

Abstract

The first novel written by the Mozambican historian João Paulo Borges Coelho, As duas sombras do rio (2003), highlights through the borderline contacts of his country a number of inheritances left by Portuguese colonialism. Although the novel deals with the country’s postindependence era and its subsequent civil war, Borges Coelho calls our attention to the historical construction that contributed to the conflicts that took place after the colonizer was expelled. Connecting fictum and factum, we aim at emphasizing the inheritance of the colonial period and the difficulties faced by FRELIMO when, after the independence, it rose to power.