Domestic Neocolonialism through Narrative Structure: A Comparative Analysis of Mia Couto’s Sleepwalking Land and Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s The Society of Reluctant Dreamers

Abstract

This article provides a comparative analysis of Mia Couto’s Sleepwalking Land and José Eduardo Agualusa’s, The Society of Reluctant Dreamers, examining how domestic neocolonialism is represented through narrative form. Informed by Frantz Fanon’s theory of Decolonisation and Achille Mbembe’s concept of Necropolitics, the study investigates how fragmented structures, temporal disjunctions, and layered perspectives convey the persistence of colonial domination within post-independence Mozambique and Angola. Couto employs a frame narrative and embedded texts to evoke the collapse of order and identity in a war-torn society, while Agualusa blends metafiction and shifting viewpoints to critique the internalisation of neocolonial power. Both authors reject linear realism in favour of disrupted and hybrid storytelling, transforming narrative architecture into a political act that resists imposed epistemologies and affirms African modes of meaning-making. Ultimately, the analysis argues that these formal strategies both expose the realities of domestic neocolonialism and function as decolonial interventions, positioning the novels as critical engagements with the instability and contested sovereignty of postcolonial African states.