Mia Couto’s writing is rooted in the firm belief that cultural labour can lead to more civilisation and less barbarism. Cultural labour, as the term suggests, refers to different types of work and practices related to work in the broad cultural sphere, including those that result in a wide range of textual products, including literature. The term creative labour is often used as a synonym, stressing that cultural labour results from the creativity of a diverse group of workers or “labourers”, such as performers, artists but also writers. Literature occupies a particular place in that cultural realm, for it is often seen as irrelevant or marginal to any major economic activity, to the point that a discussion of literary writing as cultural labour might seem irrelevant. This is especially true for those places where creativity is still much part of wishful thinking, as in most authoritarian regimes where individual expression is extremely difficult or discouraged; either because of uncertain existential conditions, or because it is a risky business in places where it can be easily interpreted as a provocation to the regime in power. Working in precarious, often hazardous conditions is unfortunately still a reality in the third decade of the twenty-first century, for many African and other postcolonial writers.