BOOK

The Illustrious House of Ramires, presented here in a sparkling new translation by Margaret Jull Costa, is the favorite novel of many Eça de Queirós aficionados. This late masterpiece, wickedly funny and yet profoundly tender, centers on Gonçalo Ramires, heir to a family so aristocratic that it predates even the kings of Portugal. Gonçalo—charming but disastrously effete, idealistic but hopelessly weak—muddles through his pampered life, burdened by a grand ambition. He is determined to write a great historical novel based on the heroic deeds of his fierce medieval ancestors.  But “the record of their valor,” as The London Spectator remarked, “is ironically counterpointed by his own chicanery. A combination of Don Quixote and Walter Mitty, Ramires is continually humiliated but at the same time kindhearted. Ironic comedy is the keynote of the novel. Eça de Queirós has justly been compared with Flaubert and Stendhal."

the social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Brazil. These signature traits are on full display in Quincas Borba, a novel that sees Machado satirize a rapidly changing Rio de Janeiro.

Originally published in 1891, the story begins with the death of its titular character, a mad philosopher infamous for spouting pessimistic theories of “Humanitism.” Borba leaves his fortune—including his dog, also named Quincas Borba—to Rubião, his loyal caretaker and a schoolteacher by trade. Bestowed with opulence beyond his wildest dreams, Rubião is quickly coaxed into the comforts of a rich man’s life—the only stipulation being that he continues to care for the canine Quincas Borba with the same dedication he once did the human. Adrift in the big, bad, bustling world of late-1860s Rio de Janeiro, it isn’t long before Rubião is targeted by the city’s sycophants, who can smell his naïveté from a mile away.

Playfully told by an omniscient and possibly unreliable narrator, the novel is at once irreverent and ambitious, brimming with barbed wit and keen philosophical inquiry. Brilliantly translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson—the duo credited with introducing a new generation of readers to Machado through their translations of Dom Casmurro, The Collected Stories, and Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas—Quincas Borba is another strikingly modern tale from a blazing progenitor of twentieth-century fiction.

Lóri, a primary school teacher, is isolated and nervous, comfortable with children but unable to connect to adults. When she meets Ulisses, a professor of philosophy, an opportunity opens: a chance to escape the shipwreck of introspection and embrace the love, including the sexual love, of a man. Her attempt, as Sheila Heti writes in her afterword, is not only “to love and to be loved,” but also “to be worthy of life itself.”

Published in 1968, An Apprenticeship is Clarice Lispector’s attempt to reinvent herself following the exhausting effort of her metaphysical masterpiece The Passion According to G. H. Here, in this unconventional love story, she explores the ways in which people try to bridge the gaps between them, and the result, unusual in her work, surprised many readers and became a bestseller.

Some appreciated its accessibility; others denounced it as sexist or superficial. To both admirers and critics, the olympian Clarice gave a typically elliptical answer: “I humanized myself,” she said. “The book reflects that.”

• Language: English
• No. of Pages: 160
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing
• ISBN: 9780811232210

about Author

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called "astounding" (Rachel Kushner), "a penetrating genius" (Donna Seaman, Booklist ), and "one of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers" (Orhan Pamuk). Born in Belém, Brazil,Stefan Tobler is the publisher of And Other Stories and, whenever time permits, a translator from Portuguese and German. His translation of Arno Geiger's  The Old King in His Exile  was shortlisted for both the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and Schlegel-Tieck Prize, and his other translations include the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize-shortlisted  Água Viva  by Clarice Lispector and the Man Booker International Prize finalist  A Cup of Rage  by Raduan Nassar. Sheila Heti is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including How Should a Person Be?, which New York Magazine deemed one of the "New Classics of the 21st century. She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a top book of 2018. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages."

A well-written, deeply personal saga that acknowledges the resonance of historical identity, art, and literature in our present lives." --KIRKUS REVIEWS

1570: A street teems with activity in Renaissance Lisbon: boatmen unload passengers as jugglers entertain the crowd and vendors hawk their goods. The crowd is large, and more than half of it is Black. Most are enslaved African people performing an array of duties, but there are free Africans too, and somebody else: a Black knight astride a horse.

Four hundred and fifty years later, novelist and journalist Joaquim Arena stands in a museum, transfixed by the character depicted on this canvas by an anonymous Flemish painter. He doesn't know it yet, but the knight is Joao de S Panasco, a one-time slave who nevertheless became an Afro-Portuguese nobleman. So begins Under Our Skin, a wide-ranging investigation that seeks to know the people of the early African diaspora, and tell their stories.

Arena was born in the tiny state of Cape Verde, a small chain of islands off the West Coast of Africa which were uninhabited before Portugal chose them for a slave-trade post--a place made famous in part by Herman Melville's essay on the nature of Cape Verdeans (known as 'Gees') who were common fixtures on whaling vessels.
With this awareness, Arena creates a hybrid text of travel writing, memoir, and history, filled with portraits of complex and fascinating characters. There is Dido Elizabeth Belle, the daughter of a slave raised a gentlewoman in England; Abraham Petrovitch Gannibal, abducted from Africa as a boy, only to be groomed as a nobleman under Peter the Great; Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a Haitian slave, who became a French general in the Napoleonic Wars; Jacobus Capitein, from Ghana, who studies at a European university only to become a pro-slavery Christian minister in the Netherlands; and Carlos Marcelino

The search for a notorious vigilante exposes the secrets between three generations of women in this propulsive novel of female resistance and rage, sweeping from contemporary L.A. to gritty, 1970s New York.

Los Angeles, 2024. After learning that her A-List actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media, Margot Cooper runs away from the world—and the paparazzi—by fleeing to her childhood home with her teenage daughter in tow.

But home isn’t the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she finds damning evidence of an infamous urban legend, the mysterious vigilante “Lady X”—including a blurry newspaper photo of a woman who looks an awful lot like Margot’s mother.

New York City, 1977. In the midst of an infamous summer, Ginger Daughtry and her two beloved roommates are able to shield each other from the chaos—until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from police, the young women decide to engage in some light payback, signing their handiwork as “Lady X.”

Soon copycats appear, and a movement inspired by acts of vandalism against terrible men spirals out of control, with criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic “Lady X.” When a body is found fallen—or pushed—from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point.

But Lady X has vanished into thin air.

A monster mender works hard to heal all wounds, but struggles to help a sea serpent who just seems … sad.

Dot is a monster healer. She treats bruises and burns and sore throats and sniffles for all sorts of creatures — dragons, krakens and gryphons included. But when Sea Serpent comes to see her because he’s feeling sad, Dot is stumped! She goes looking for the rarest ingredients to make something to get rid of Sea Serpent’s sad, but the potions and salves don’t help, and Sea Serpent doesn't seem too keen on trying any more exotic teas.

Dot is worried that she’ll never be able to help Sea Serpent feel better. Lately, all she’s brought Sea Serpent has been her own company, and not-at-all-special tea. Does this mean she isn’t a very good monster mender, after all? When Sea Serpent comes to her with an unexpected revelation, Dot learns the healing power of being a true friend.

A gentle (and fantastical!) tale of what it means to support a friend struggling with their mental health, from the award-winning author of Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress and Violet Shrink.

Christine Baldacchino

Ilona Iske

HER ONLY CRIME WAS TO BE AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN
 
When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless.  Within months she was the most celebrated woman in the city.
 
As a dancer, she shocked and delighted audiences; as a courtesan, she bewitched the era’s richest and most powerful men.
 
But as paranoia consumed a country at war, Mata Hari’s lifestyle brought her under suspicion. In 1917, she was arrested in her hotel room on the Champs Elysees, and accused of espionage.
 
Told in Mata Hari’s voice through her final letter, The Spy is the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to defy convention and who paid the ultimate price.

hardcover

The Ultimate Tragedy is a tale of love and emerging political awareness in an Africa beginning to challenge Portuguese colonial rule.e€" Ndani leaves her village to seek a better life in the capital, finding work as a maid for a Portuguese family. The mistress of the house, Dona Deolinda, embarks on a mission to save Ndani's soul through religious teaching, but the master of the house has less righteous intentions. Ndani is expelled from the house and drifts towards home, where she becomes the wife of a village chief. He has built a mansion and a school to flaunt his power to the local Portuguese administrator, but he abandons Ndani when he finds she's not a virgin. She eventually finds love with the school's teacher, but in tumultuous times, making a future with an educated black man involves a series of hurdles.e€" By turns humorous, heartrending and wise. 

Author

Abdulai Silá was born in 1958 in Catió, Guinea Bissau. He moved to the capital, Bissau, to complete his school studies and then to Dresden, Germany, to complete a degree in Power Engineering.

He currently lives in Bissau and combines telecommunications work with writing.

He is the author of four novels, A Última Tragédia, Eterna Paixão [Eternal Passion], Mistida [Mixed] and Memórias (Mantic Memories], all of which deal with Bissau-Guinean culture and history. He is the co-founder of the publisher Ku Si Mon Editora and he has also written a play, As Orações de Mansat [Mansat's Prayers], a Bissau-Guinean Macbeth.

Translator

Jethro Soutar is a translator of Spanish and Portuguese. He has translated crime fiction from Argentina (Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo, nominated for an International Dagger) and Brazil (Hotel Brasilby Frei Betto, winner of a PEN award) for Bitter Lemon Press. His translation of By Night The Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel was published by And Other Stories in November 2014. He also co-edited and co-translated The Football Crónicas for Ragpicker Press.

Sleepwalking Land written by Mia Couto translated by David Brookshaw.

On almost every page of this witty magical realist whodunit, we sense Couto's delight on those places where language slips officialdom's asphyxiating grasp." The New York Times Book Review on The Last Flight of the Flamingo

The most prominent of the younger generation of writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa, Couto passionately and sensitively describes everyday life in poverty-stricken Mozambique." Guardian (London)

Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa."

Doris Lessing

As the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem. Written in 1992, Mia Couto's first novel is a powerful indictment of the suffering war brings.

Born in 1955 in Mozambique, Mia Couto ran the AIM news agency during the revolutionary struggle. He now lives in Maputo where he works as an environmental biologist and heads the Mozambique side of the Limpopo Transnational Park. In 2007 he was the first African author to win the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages; in 2013 he was awarded the €100,000 Camões Prize for Literature, in recognition of his life's work. In 2014 he received the $50,000 Neustadt Prize for Literature, and in 2015 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.

Author

Mia Couto was born in 1955 in Mozambique and is the most prominent writer in Portuguese-speaking Africa. He has been active as a journalist and during the revolutionary struggle headed the AIM news agency. He now lives in Maputo where he works as an environmental biologist and runs the Mozambique part of the Kruger National Park.

Translator

 David Brookshaw is a London-born professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Bristol specializing in comparative literature, translation, and postcolonial Portuguese literature.  He has translated works by Mia Cuoto and Onésimo Almeida and compiled an anthology of stories by the Portuguese author José Rodrigues Miguéis.

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret written by Ondjaki translated by Stephen Henighan. 

THE WINNER OF THE 2013 JOSE Saramago, Prize  AFRICA39/UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE 

By the beaches of Luanda, the Soviets are building a grand mausoleum in honour of the Comrade President. Granmas are houses, they say, will be "dexploded," and everyone will have to leave. With the help of his friends Charlita and Pi (whom everyone calls 3.14), and with assistance from Dr. Rafael Knockknock, the Comrade Gas Jockey, the amorous Gudafterov, crazy Sea Foam, and a ghost, our young hero must decide exactly how much trouble he s willing to face to keep his Granma safe in Bishop s Beach. Energetic and colourful, impish and playful, "Granma Nineteen and the Soviet s Secret" is a charming coming-of-age story from the next rising star in African literature."

Author

Naalu de Almeida (born 1977) is a writer from Angola, writing under the pen name Ondjaki. He lives in Luanda. He completed his degree in Sociology in Lisbon in 2002 with a study on the great Angolan writer Luandino Vieira. A versatile young talent and a most promising writer of the Portuguese language in Africa, he has already had paintings exhibited, given public performances as an actor, as well as published his own poems and novels. Ondjaki has been awarded the Grande Prémio de

Conto Camilo Castelo Branco 2008 by the Portuguese Writers' Association for his novel Os da Minha Rua. In 2008 he was distinguished with the Grinzane for Africa award, in the category of young writer, and recently, Ondjaki has won the prestigious Jabuti Prize 2010 with his juvenile book AvóDezanove e o Segredo do Sovietico.

Translator

Stephen Patrick Glanvill Henighan was born in Hamburg, and The remainder of his upbringing took place on a farm in Eastern Ontario. Stephen teaches Spanish American literature at the University of Guelph, Ontario.  Henighan has written short stories and novels about immigrants and travellers. For his fiction Stephen has won the Potter Short Story Prize and a McNally-Robinson Fiction Prize.  For his non-fiction he has been a finalist  for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Canada Prize in the Humanities, a National Magazine Award and a Western Magazine Award.

Author: Isabel Figueiredo, Language: Portuguese,

Este novo romance de Isabela Figueiredo, a que ela deu o sugestivo e justificado título de Um Cão no Meio do Caminho, conta-nos as histórias de um homem e de uma mulher que sofrem, cada um à sua maneira, um dos grandes males da vida moderna – a solidão. Neles a solidão é a resposta aos violentos acidentes com que a vida os agrediu.
As sociedades modernas vivem sobre a violência. Mas há quem a recuse, como é aqui o caso de José Viriato e da sua misteriosa vizinha, Beatriz, que todos conhecem como a Matadora. O acaso junta-os, como o leitor verificará com a leitura deste livro. Que resultado obtemos quando se juntam duas solidões? É esta a questão que este novo romance da autora do aclamado A Gorda vem equacionar, deixando a resposta ao critério de cada leitor. Eventualmente um cão pode ajudar.

Autor

Isabela Figueiredo Nasceu em Lourenço Marques, Moçambique, hoje Maputo, em 1963, filha de portugueses oriundos da zona Centro-Oeste de Portugal. Após a independência de Moçambique, em 1975, rumou a Portugal. Licenciou-se em Línguas e Literaturas Modernas, variante de Estudos Portugueses, na Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Especializou-se em Estudos sobre as Mulheres na Universidade Aberta. Trabalhou como jornalista no Diário de Notícias entre 1988 e 1994, onde foi também coordenadora do suplemento DN Jovem. Foi professora de português no ensino secundário. Escreveu Conto É Como Quem Diz, novela que recebeu o primeiro prémio da Mostra Portuguesa de Artes e Ideias, Caderno de Memórias Coloniais, cuja edição francesa foi finalista do Prémio Femina Estrangeiro, e A Gorda, obra que recebeu o Prémio Literário Urbano Tavares Rodrigues. Estas duas obras alcançaram grande êxito junto do público e da crítica, especialmente em Portugal e no Brasil, sendo constantemente reimpressas. Escreve regularmente para o seu blogue Novo Mundo

Written by Cristina Mesquita De Oliveira, Language Portuguese,

Menopausa não é doença. É, somente, uma etapa na vida da mulher, tal como a puberdade. No entanto, continua a ser alvo de preconceitos e de muita informação contraditória.

Stress e exaustão, mudanças de humor, alterações no padrão de sono, confusão mental, baixa líbido, ondas de calor, suores noturnos e aumento de peso são alguns dos efeitos do processo de menopausa.

Uma etapa de vida desafiante, que pode parecer solitária, mas não tem de ser assim!

Com este livro, Cristina Mesquita De Oliveira, presidente da Associação Portuguesa de Menopausa, oferece conhecimento, combatendo mitos e mal-entendidos, para ajudar todas as mulheres a transformarem esse momento desafiante num processo emocionante e positivo.

Descubra o que acontece ao seu corpo durante as três fases do processo de menopausa;
Saiba o que esperar, os efeitos mais comuns, porque se manifestam e como lidar com eles;
Obtenha orientação abrangente sobre a variedade de tratamentos disponíveis, incluindo medicina tradicional e complementar.

Deixe a menopausa das suas mãe e avós para trás e viva sem medos a menopausa do século XXI!

Written by Danielle Steel and translated to Portuguese by Ana Lourenço, Language Portuguese,

Da mais amada escritora do mundo chega-nos uma história contada com extraordinária ternura e paixão, à medida que Danielle Steel explora o que realmente significa ter magia nas nossas vidas. É de facto possível manter uma certa magia na vida de todos os dias? Tudo começa numa noite de verão, com o tipo de magia que só se pode encontrar em Paris. Uma vez por ano, realiza-se na cidade da luz um jantar sumptuoso às portas de um monumento espetacular: a Torre Eiffel, o museu do Louvre, o Arco do Triunfo… Um cenário novo de cada vez. Selecionados por convite secreto, os convidados chegam vestidos de branco e sentam-se a uma mesa de sonho. Toalhas de linho branco, flores frescas, talheres e candelabros de prata, pratos de porcelana requintada e cristais cintilantes. Quando a noite termina, centenas de lanternas de papel branco são lançadas para o céu, cada uma com uma chama no seu interior, que guarda também os desejos fervorosos de todos. E hoje, entre os participantes do glamoroso Jantar Branco em Paris está um grupo de amigos para quem nada voltará a ser como dantes. Jean-Philippe e Valerie parecem ter já uma vida de sonho. Ele é uma estrela em ascensão no mundo da alta-finança, ela a editora-adjunta da Vogue francesa. Em Milão, também o casal Mariani gere um pequeno império de moda que a todos parece indestrutível, tal como a imagem da relação que projetam. Já Dharam, um carismático empresário indiano, virá para acompanhar a argumentista Chantal. Acompanharemos estas personagens durante esta noite mágica e, dando a volta ao mundo, também durante os 365 dias seguintes, um ano em que nascerão novos amores e amizades e as suas vidas mudarão para sempre, numa história apaixonante sobre a magia que se esconde nas dobras da vida.

Autor

Danielle Steel já escreveu mais de 200 livros, entre ficção, não ficção, poesia e livros infantis. Ultrapassou recentemente a marca dos mil milhões de livros vendidos em todo o mundo e é publicada em inúmeros países e muitas línguas. Todo e cada um dos seus livros é um bestseller, e escreveu o primeiro aos 19 anos. Steel entrou também para o Guinness Book of World Records por ter tido um ou mais livros seus durante 381 semanas consecutivas na lista de bestsellers do New York Times. Foram adaptadas para telefilme ou para série televisiva vinte e uma obras suas. Steel nasceu em Nova Iorque, filha de mãe portuguesa e pai alemão, frequentou sempre liceus franceses e passou grande parte da juventude em França, sendo o francês a sua língua-mãe. Apaixonada pela arte e pelo design, frequentaria mais tarde a New York University e a Parsons School of Design.

Author: Johnathan Freeland, Language: Portuguese

O Círculo dos Traidores de Hitler conta a história verdadeira, mas praticamente desconhecida, de um grupo secreto de rebeldes que se uniram contra Hitler. Oriundos da alta sociedade de Berlim, o grupo incluía oficiais do Exército, funcionários do Governo, duas condessas, a viúva de um embaixador e uma ex-modelo, reunindo-se nas sombras, escondendo e resgatando judeus ou conspirando por uma Alemanha libertada do regime nazi.

Um dia, em setembro de 1943, reúnem-se para um faustoso lanche à inglesa, sem saberem que um deles está prestes a traí-los a todos e a entregá-los à Gestapo. Mas quem é o traidor do círculo que um dos regimes mais cruéis da história designaria como «dos traidores»?

Em mais uma obra de não ficção que se lê como um thriller, Jonathan Freedland, aclamado autor de O Mestre da Fuga, lança luz sobre um dos episódios mais dramáticos da Segunda Guerra Mundial, contando uma história de coragem, resistência e traição que tem profunda ressonância moral com o nosso tempo.

Author: Luís V. Lopes Language: Portuguese,

O que muda no nosso cérebro quando nos apaixonamos? E quando sofremos um desgosto de amor? Existem diferenças entre os cérebros masculinos e femininos quando as pessoas se enamoram? E quando envelhecem? Em "Programados para Amar", a neurocientista Luísa V. Lopes dá resposta a estas e a outras questões, partilhando o que a neurociência sabe sobre o amor, de forma acessível, mas rigorosa. E, claro não esquece temas como a infidelidade, a violência, o impacto da tecnologia no amor moderno e as alterações cerebrais na terceira idade. Ao longo destas páginas, reencontramos a emoção mais universal de todas, habitualmente descrita por poetas e pensadores, mas aqui com o precioso e esclarecedor auxílio da ciência. Quem nunca sentiu o coração bater mais forte, ou perdeu o sono e o apetite por causa de uma paixão, mais ou menos correspondida? A ciência ajuda a explicar aquilo que muitas vezes não conseguimos expressar por palavras, mas, neste livro, Luísa V. Lopes não se limita a descrever o funcionamento do cérebro nas várias fases do amor e da dor. Em "Programados para Amar" ajuda os leitores a refletirem sobre as experiências e relações que vivem, ou viveram, e a compreenderem, de modo mais global, o que significa, afinal, amar e ser amado.

Autor

Luísa V. Lopes é neurocientista, coordenadora de um grupo de investigação na Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa e na Fundação Gulbenkian de Medicina Molecular (GIMM). Licenciada em Bioquímica e doutorada em Neurociências, trabalhou na Universidade de Cambridge, no "Karolinska Institutet" e no centro de investigação da "Nestlé". Estuda os mecanismos sinápticos do envelhecimento e as alterações da memória, com mais de 70 publicações em revistas científicas de referência e diversos prémios nacionais e internacionais. Entre a investigação e a docência, dedica-se também à divulgação científica, assinando colunas no "Público" e participando no "podcast [In]Pertinente".

ISBN 9789896662066

PÁGINAS 160

overview in English

This book titled "Programados para AMAR"

(Programmed to LOVE) is written by neuroscientist Luisa V. Lopes and explores what neuroscience understands and ignores regarding love. The book focuses on the neurological and scientific aspects of human romantic connections.