Manuela Gonzaga Portugal

© Marta Gonzaga

Manuela Gonzaga was born in Porto in 1953. At the age of twelve she went to Angola and Mozambique with her family. In Maputo she began to write for various newspapers. Currently she is living in Lisbon and working as a journalist.

Jardins secretos (“Secret Gardens”) is a love story of two people who could hardly differ more. The setting is contemporary Lisbon. Alice, a vulnerable and disillusioned photographer, is ensnared by Jorge, a sharp-tongued cynic with an infinite repertoire of precious stories about the dark and mystic side of Lisbon. Jorge takes Alice on nocturnal expeditions through the old part of the town, to run-down pubs and hotel bars, and shows her traces of the Inquisition, freemasonry and Portuguese colonial history. Through him Alice is able to regain control over her life.

Jardins secretos includes a large number of interrelated family stories, which date back to the 1960s and 70s, and deal with Alice’s difficult childhood, her unemotional and insensitive mother and her father, who had a small photo studio - the “secret garden” - in the cellar.

Jardins secretos combines the mystical and the distraught with reality and ordinary life. It displays more than one Lisbon. Rather than showing one side of the character, it points out to the innumerable coexistent facets of the city and its inhabitants.

Manuela Gonzaga could even be described as a Scherezade, going to her death still telling her tales. She has a thousand-and-one to relate.

Leonor Xavier, O QUÊ

Manuela Gonzaga’s new novel is filled with oriental sensuality, African passions and cosmopolitan tendencies, with echoes of lyricism and the vestiges of a rural history heading towards oblivion.

Helena Vasconcelos, MÁXIMA

Represented for Gótica, Portugal

Novel:

Jardins secretos, Lisbon: Gótica 2001, 509 p.

Stories:

A morte da avó cega, Planeta 1998