Reading Europe celebrates Portugal

Reading Europe celebrates Portugal 
READING EUROPE FROM UK INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
There are 24 countries in the EU in addition to the 4 countries in the British Isles and Commonwealth. Before the EU Referendum let us take the opportunity to find out something more about fellow members and neighbours. The recommended titles have been selected to let the reader know the literature, history and culture of each country better. On 14 June we celebrate Portugal.
 
RECOMMENDED TITLE FROM PORTUGAL
The Crime of Father Amaro by Eca de Queiroz, translated by Margaret Jull Costa( Dedalus)
ISBN 978 1 873982 89 1,471 pages, £11.99
The Crime of Father Amaro is a good introduction to Portuguese literature. Published in 1878 it is the first great realistic novel in the language. In it Eca sets out to expose the hypocrisy of small-town provincial Portugal, of so called freethinkers and the Church.
 
Now and at the hour of our death by Susan Moreira Marques, translated by Julia Sanchez(And Other Stories)
ISBN 978 1 908276 62 9,128 pages, £8.99
Accompanying a palliative care team, Susan Moreira Marques travels to a forgotten corner of northern Portugal: Tras-os-Montes, a rural area abandoned by the young. Crossing great distances where eagles circle over the roads, she visits villages where rural ways of life are disappearing. She listens to families facing death and gives us their stories in their words as well as through her own meditations.
 
FURTHER READING FOR PORTUGAL FROM DEDALUS
Anthology
The Dedalus Book of Portuguese Fantasy edited by Eugene Lisboa & Machedo translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 873982 662, 292 pages, £10.99
Dedalus readers will already be familiar with the works of the two great Portuguese writers: Eca de Querioz and Mario de Sa-Carneiro, who feature prominently in this collection. It will also introduce many hitherto unknown and untranslated Portuguese authors to the British public, such as Jose Rodrigues Migueis, Domingos Monteiro, Fialho de Almeida, Jose Regio, David Mourao-Ferreira, Alvaro do Carvalhal, Ferreira de Castro and Almada Negreiros.
 
Contemporary fiction
The Prodigious Physician by Jorge de Sena translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 910213 38 4, 119 pages, £7.99
'This novella holds the classic foundations of a medieval fairy tale yet told in a modern voice. Three trials, magic objects and an erotic devil are all at play in the ironic story of religion, science and politics. The funny and erotic play of doubles between the three maidens and the three goddesses creates a wonderful uncertainty of reality and truth. Margaret Jull Costa has done a marvellous job translating the confusion of ownership, ethics, and politics with this intriguing and witty novella.'
Buzz Magazine
 
The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersao, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 903517 88 8, 204 pages, £9.99 'Salazar's forty-year dictatorship in Portugal and that country's colonial wars in Africa cast their long shadow over Teolinda Gersao's The Word Tree. Laureano's wife Amelia had come to the country from Portugal in search of a better life, but mentally never leaves her homeland, whereas her daughter Gita loves the country and grows up to resent the colonial presence. There are lush descriptions of the country, while the racial order is starkly spelt out: Amelia 'clings to the belief that fair-skinned people are the very top of the racial hierarchy, and that dark-skinned Portuguese people are almost at the bottom, just above the Indians and the blacks'.'
Adrian Tahourdin in The Times Literary Supplement
 
Our Musseque by Jose Luandino Vieira translated by Robin Patterson
ISBN 978 1 910213 07 0, 196 pages, £9.99
'Growing up in a shanty town or musseque on the edge of Luanda in Angola during the 1940s is brought to life in this fictionalised account of a childhood darkened by Angola's move towards armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. Despair is undercut by the hope as well as the fear of change.' Eileen Battersby in The Irish Times
Classics
 
The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers by Eca de Queiroz translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 1 873982 64 8, 346 pages, £9.99
'Attractive and repellent by turns, Genoveva is a splendid creation who almost achieves stature and sympathy sufficient for tragedy in a novel otherwise suffused with irony and bathos. Through her Eca anatomises Portuguese society, cutting through its superficial elegance to the inadequacy and insecurity he discerns - with sympathy - underneath. The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers justifies his claim to be numbered among the great European novelists of his day.' Paul Duguid in The Times Literary Supplement
 
The City and the Mountains by Eca de Queiroz translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 903517 71 0,238 pages, £9.99
'It follows with a smart balance of satire, irony and lyric grace the progress of a rich brat who quits the city to find fulfilment in rural life. Trustafarian Jacinto grows up in the stifling lap of luxury at 202 Champs-Elysees: an address to die for, and he almost does, smothered by the hi-tech gadgetry of the 1890s. Then, after a summons back to the family estate in Portugal, he leaves Paris for a radical makeover as nature-loving country gent. The narrator's wry tone, well caught in Margaret Jull Costa's translation, captures all the ambivalence of Jacinto's path as the retired decadent turns virtuous squire and grows positively dull as a result.'
 
Boyd Tonkin in The Independent recommends
 
The Relic by Eca de Queiroz translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 0 946626 94 6, 288 pages, £9.99
Teodorico Raposo, the novel's anti-hero, is a master of deceit; one minute feigning devotion in front of his rich, pious aunt, in order to inherit her money, the next indulging in debauchery. Spurred on by the desire to please his aunt, and in order to get away from his unfaithful mistress, he embarks on a journey to the Holy Land in search of a holy relic. The resulting fiasco is a masterpiece of comic irony as religious bigotry and personal greed are mercilessly ridiculed.
 
The Mandarin (and other stories) by Eca de Queiroz translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1903517 80 2,176 pages, £7.99
In this volume comprising one short novel and six short stories, the reader is introduced to a dazzling variety of worlds and characters: a deceived husband who finds that jealousy is not the answer, a lovelorn Greek poet-turned-waiter working in a Charing Cross hotel, a saintly young woman soured by love, a follower of St Francis who learns that an entire life of virtue can be besmirched by one cruel act, Adam in Paradise pondering the pros and cons of dominion over the earth, Jesus healing a child, and a loyal
 
The Mystery of the Sintra Road by Eca de Queiroz & Ramalho Ortigao translated by Margaret Jull Costa & Nick Phillips
ISBN 978 1 909232 29 7, 288 pages, £9.99
Eca de Queiroz's first novel and Portugal's first mystery-cum-detective novel in its first English translation. Two friends are kidnapped by several masked men, who, to judge by their manners and their accent are men of the best society. One of the friends is a doctor, and the masked men say that they need him to assist a noblewoman, who is about to give birth. When they reach the house, they find no such noblewoman, only a dead man. Another man, known only as A.M.C., bursts in at this point and declares that the man died of opium poisoning. The doctor writes a letter to a newspaper editor, setting out the facts as he knows them. These facts are rebutted first by a friend of A.M.C. and then by the first masked man, who explains the whole story...
 
Cousin Bazilio by Eca de Queiroz translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 910213 37 7, 439 pages, £12.99(New edition July 2016) 'Sauciness and scandal come as part of the enticing package in this 1878 European classic by Portugal's most celebrated 19th century writer. Cousin Bazilio might not be his best work, but it certainly drew the most attention when it was originally published, for all the wrong reasons;specifically deceitful lusts, a series of characters - some aristocratic hedonistic socialites, others colourful aspiring servants, but all connected by a string of naughty secrets. The tale rips along at a pace that could outdo any modern soap, while the social realist side of de Queiroz shows up the hypocritical limitations laid down by society, particularly on female morality. A classic then, but distinctly alternative in every way.'
The Scotsman
 
The Maias by Eca de Queiroz translated by Margaret Jull Costa ISBN 978 1 910213 44 5, 721 pages, £14.99 (New edition August 2016)
'Eca de Queiroz spent eight years writing The Maias. This is a novel in the tradition of Flaubert or Dickens, in which de Queiroz anatomises a society through a brilliant drama of a family's decline and downfall. Margaret Jull Costa's translation is supple, transparent and wonderfully paced. There seems be no barrier at all between the reader and what the author intended. The novel shades from realism to romanticism, from satire to tragedy.The vigour and charm of the characters come across beautifully in this translation, and so does de Queiroz's biting, sometimes despairing view of Lisbon society in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.' Helen Dunmore, novelist and chair of the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
 
Lucio's Confession by Mario de Sa-Carneiro translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 873982 80 8, 121 pages, £8.99
"Written in 1913 this is a thoroughly decadent story of an unusual menage a trois which ends in a killing. It's filled with poets and artists and those special problems that sensitive people have ('Do you that music? It's like a symbol of my life; a wonderful melody murdered by a terrible unworthy performer.')The last word on this magnificent period piece - bejewelled and opiated and splendidly over the top - belongs to one of its characters 'It seems more like the vision of some brilliant onanist than reality'." Phil Baker in The Sunday Times
 
The Great Shadow (and other stories) by Mario de Sa-Carneiro translated by Margaret Jull Costa
ISBN 978 1 873982 72 3, 249 pages,£8.99
'Sa-Carneiro was only 26 when he committed suicide in Paris in 1916. His short stories depict madness, death, erotic jealousy and fin de siecle decadence in fragmented and luminously synaesthetic prose. Almost anticipating Kafka, he describes a scientist killed by the machinery of an invisible parallel world, and a poet, whose verses fly to the stars leaving blank pages in their wake.' Scotland on Sunday