LAVRADOR, Benvinda. Male and female identity: Myth and utopia in Yara, a Virgem da Babilónia. []. , 26, 3, pp.151-162. ISSN 0807-8967.

This article aims at analyzing the symbolic ideology of the novel Yara, a virgem da Babilónia (2008), by the Mozambican Adelino Timóteo, through the mythical and human dimension of a feminine figure and the existential drama of a man. Coming from different continents, victims of the war or misery, both characters encountered themselves at Beira, a micro space of Mozambique. In the confrontation of male and female worlds, between dream and reality, fiction deconstructs myth and creates new ideals which subvert traditional concepts of love and age, sexuality and virginity. But, utopia search of love from the characters and the failure of their ideals represents the end of the myth developed at the euphoric time of political independence of a new and modern nation which afterwards fell in apathy and inertia.

: Mozambique; novel; feminism; myth; utopia.

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