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Lídia Jorge Portugal
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Lídia Jorge, born 1946, is from Boliqueime, Algarve, in
southern Portugal. She studied French Literature in Lisbon and then, during the
colonial war, spent a few years in Angola and Mozambique as a teacher. She also
lectured at the University in Lisbon, which is where she currently lives. Her
first two novels placed her in the avant-garde of contemporary Portuguese
literature and ever since she has received numerous prestigious awards for her
work.
In 2006, the Günter Grass Foundation awarded its newly
created literary prize, the Albatros,
to the author and to Karin von Schweder-Schreiner for her excellent translation
into the German language of O vento assobiando nas gruas.
Her first two novels placed
her in the avant-garde of contemporary Portuguese literature and ever since she
has received numerous prestigious awards for her work. Lídia Jorge aims to
illustrate the changes which have or have not taken place in Portuguese society
since 1974. She mainly chooses two settings: the world of her childhood, the
rural South of Portugal, as for example in O vale da paixão (“The
Painter of Birds”) or O vento assobiando nas gruas (“The Wind whistling in the Cranes”)
or the city of Lisbon, as in Notícia da cidade silvestre (“News from the
City Jungle”) or O jardim sem limites (“The Garden without Limits”),
except for A costa dos murmúrios (“The murmuring Coast”), a powerful
book about the colonial war, which was a decisive experience for the author’s
generation.
Portugal can count among its citizens three of the premier novelists
writing today. Nobel laureate José Saramago is one, and modernist António Lobo
Antunes is another. Lídia Jorge must also be included. She writes with a
gorgeous economy and an urgent beauty. Her new novel, The Painter of Birds, is the work of a master.
INQUIRER
The Painter of Birds unites the best of Lídia Jorge’s
writing, indeed almost the best of Portuguese culture, which is always
determined to preserve the past, perhaps nostalgically, but also to conquer the
future […] Jorge’s lyrical prose has an inwardness that is both gentle and
brutal; here it attains an unusual beauty. The Painter of Birds is certainly
one of the best contemporary Portuguese novels.
EL PAÍS
The
novel O vento assobiando nas gruas (“The Wind is whistling in the
Cranes”) was published in 2002 and has been awarded the prize of the Günter
Grass Foundation, ALBATROS, in 2006. Grandmother Regina Leandro has fled from
hospital and is later found dead in front of the entrance to the old cannery in
Valmares. Milene, the grand-daughter who lived with her, is the only one there
to organise her funeral; her other relatives are away on holiday. Milene, a
rather simple-minded person, now tries to find the right words to describe
their grandmother’s death to the relatives. The Leandro family, Milene's aunts
and uncles, belong to the wealthy upper-class. The old factory - founded in
1908 - is meantime being rented and lived in by a large family from Cabo Verde.
Milene, totally exhausted by the events surrounding the death of her
grandmother and initially speechless, is cordially welcomed into that family
and stays with them over night.
Thus
The Wind is whistling in the Cranes is set in two worlds: on the one
hand, the history of the cannery, Milene's aunts and their husbands and men
friends, her cousins, all intent on insuring that their reputation is not
tarnished by the lonely death of the old woman. All kinds of interests have to
be defended, political and financial. The factory is to be sold; the site close
to the beach is ideally located for a modern building project. On the other
hand, there is the family from Cabo Verde, the old Ana Mata, her daughters and
grand-children. A shy relationship develops between Ana Mata’s widowed but
young grand-son Antonio, a crane-driver and father of two children, and Milene.
When the Leandros finally discover this, they are horrified.
The
atmosphere in the novel is coloured by Milene’s unprejudiced view of the people
and the events. Looked upon by her relatives as the poor
childish orphan, in the very restrictedness of her small world and in all her
innocence Milene displays great human warmth and courage.
Literary audaciousness and analytic acerbity mark Lídia Jorge's texts.
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Combateremos a sombra (“We Shall Fight the Shadows”) is a courageous and political novel about
our times and about Portugal in the era of globalisation. It tells the
fascinating story of three months in the life of the psychiatrist Osvaldo
Campos. In the night of the 31st December 2000, he runs into Rossiana, an
assistant radiologist, who has just seen a drug courier die in her clinic when
a package burst inside his intestines. The clinic is clearly working together
with the drug smugglers. Because she knows too much, she is to be killed, but
can hide in the house where Osvaldo works. A love affair develops between her
and the psychiatrist.
The
immediacy of these events finally shakes Osvaldo awake, and through his
patents’ stories and traumas he uncovers a conspiracy trafficking in drugs and
human beings, in which important public figures are implicated. Suddenly, the
evil gets too much for him. “Lying is connected with death”, he writes in his
notebook. He has to act, so he turns to the press. The novel also passes on a
message of hope, despite its bleak view of our present.
In
the book, Portugal is subjected to a constant downpour. Bridges collapse and
the water takes everything with it, including corpses. This apocalyptic vision
reflects that of a depressive country, where lethargy and apathy have spread
like the floodwater – where, in the author’s words, “the chemists have sold out
of sedatives”. The title Combateremos a
sombra puts salt in the wound and is an attempt to stir awareness for the
injustices which are all too common in Portugal and around the world. With the
narrative force we have come to expect, Lídia Jorge invites us to join her in a
gripping reading experience.
The psychological tension leads the reader to a unique vantage point, at the hand of a writer who insists in showing that there is nothing more real than dreams, and nothing more fantastic than reality.
Armanda
Alexandra, OJE
A
noite das mulheres cantoras ("The Night of the Singing Women") is Lídia
Jorge's latest novel, written with great psychological subtlety and power of
language. The student Solange, a member of an all-girl band, witnesses the
charismatic lead singer Gisela pressurising young Madalena because she is
pregnant, and then covering up her death. Many years will pass before Solange
can face up to these events again – and to Gisela, the woman she admired so
much back then.
The author is back with A Noite das Mulheres Cantoras, a novel
where guilt, charisma and memory dictate the characters' survival.
Os Meus Livros
Represented in all languages, except French.
Original editions and rights sold:
O dia dos
prodígios, 1980, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1995, 206 p.
France: Métailié
1991 ● Germany: Beck & Glückler 1989, Suhrkamp pb 1992 ● Netherlands: de Prom 1996
O cais das
merendas, 1982,
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1995, 251 p.
Notícia da
cidade silvestre, 1984, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1994, 354 p.
France: Métailié 1988 ● Germany: Suhrkamp 1990, pb 1992 ● Spain: Alfaguara 1990
A costa dos
murmúrios, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1988, 259 p.
Film
directed by Margarida Cardoso, 2004
Brazil: Record 2004 ● Bulgaria: Five Plus 2011 ● France: Métailié 1989 ● Germany: Suhrkamp 1993, pb 1995 ● Greece: Polis 2002 ● Italy: Giunti 1992 ● Netherlands: Arena 1991 ● Spain: Alfaguara 2001 ● US: Univ. of Minnesota Press 1995
A última dona,
Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1992, 337 p.
France: Métailié 1995 ● Romania: Editura Art
A
instrumentalina, Lisbon:
Dom Quixote 1992, 39 p.
France: Métailié 1995 ● Germany: Suhrkamp 1998 ● Italy: Urogallo 2010 ● US: Grand Street 1999
O jardim sem
limites, Lisbon:
Dom Quixote 1995, 375 p.
France: Métailié 1998 ● Germany: Suhrkamp 1997, pb 1999 ● Greece: Polis 2001 ● Spain: Alfaguara 1995
Marido e
outros contos, Lisbon: Dom
Quixote 1997, 141 p.
Bulgaria: Five Plus ● Germany: die horen 1999 ● Hungary: Íbisz ● Spain:
Ed. Xerais 2005 (Galician)
O vale da
paixão, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 1998, 241 p.
Brazil: Record 2003 ● France: Métailié 2000 ● Germany: Suhrkamp 2000 ● Greece: Polis 2004 ● Iceland: Fjölvi-Vasa ● Israel: Hakibbutz 2005 ● Italy: Bompiani 2003 ● Romania: Editura Art 2008 ● Serbia & Montenegro: Narodna ● Slovenia: Mladinska 2007 ● Spain: Seix Barral 2001 ● Sweden: Bromberg 2001 ● UK: Harvill 2001 ● US: Harcourt 2001
O vento
assobiando nas gruas, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2002,
538 p.
Brazil: Record 2007 ● France: Métailié 2004 ● Germany: Suhrkamp 2005 ● Israel: Hakibbutz 2007 ● Serbia:
Arhipelag
Combateremos
a sombra, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2007, 484 p.
France: Métailié 2008 ● Israel: Hakibbutz 2012
A noite das
mulheres cantoras
Lisbon: Dom
Quixote 2011, 317 p.
France:
Métailié 2012
Stories:
O belo
adormecido, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2004,
241 p.
Children:
O grande voo
do pardal, Lisbon: Dom Quixote 2007,
28 p.