Description:Against the backdrop of the historic experience of colonialism, this study examines how three novels by the contemporary authors Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal) and Mia Couto (Mosambique) measure violence literarily. Their writing reflects upon the way that violence inscribes itself into time, bodies, and language in the long term. Moreover, the analyses reveal the extent to which Diop’s and Couto’s texts understand narrative as a mode of critique.