A few books will give you Maputo at the level a guidebook cannot.
Mia Couto, Sleepwalking Land (1992). The novel that put Mozambican literature on the map. Set during the civil war, it follows an old man and a boy on a road of burnt-out buses; the language is dreamlike and the country is half-myth. Couto, a white Mozambican born in Beira, is the country's best-known writer and lives in Maputo.
Mia Couto, Confession of the Lioness (2012). A more recent novel, set in a northern village beset by man-eating lions — partly a real event Couto witnessed as a consulting biologist. Shorter and more accessible than Sleepwalking Land.
Henning Mankell, Chronicler of the Winds (1995). The Swedish crime writer ran a theatre in Maputo for two decades. This is his novel about a Mozambican street child — a hard, beautiful book that conveys the texture of post-war Maputo as well as anything in English translation.
Lília Momplé, Neighbours (1995). A short novel built around the South African commando raid on Maputo in 1981 that targeted suspected ANC activists. Three families' stories interweave in the hours before the attack.
Malyn Newitt, A Short History of Mozambique (2017). Compact, readable single-volume history by the leading English-language historian of the country, from the Swahili coast period through Portuguese colonisation, the war of independence, civil war and reconstruction.