Valentine's Gift Idea

E se a verdadeira história de Rabo de Peixe for ainda mais rocambolesca do que aquela que é contada na série da Netflix?

No dia 6 de junho de 2001, Antonino Giuseppe Quinci, o protagonista da história que mudou o destino de várias gerações de rabopeixenses, aportou na vila, depois de ter escondido, pela costa de São Miguel, mais de 700 quilos de cocaína.

O açoriano Rúben Pacheco Correia empreendeu uma longa viagem à procura da verdade dos factos, assim como dos protagonistas de carne e osso, da história que inspirou a série. Sem saber até onde o iria levar a investigação a que se dedicou durante quase dois anos e que o fez viajar até à Itália e ao Brasil, o autor, conhecido gastrónomo e comentador televisivo, partiu com o desígnio de fazer justiça à verdade e também à vila onde nasceu em 1997.

Passados mais de vinte anos, o país e o mundo podem, finalmente, conhecer o rosto dos protagonistas reais e as suas histórias, inéditas e peculiares, que se desenrolaram naquele trágico ano e que mudaram, para sempre, o destino de Rabo de Peixe.

Será que, realmente, as pessoas panaram peixe com a cocaína do traficante italiano? Fizeram linhas de campo de futebol com a droga? Houve, de facto, algum padre que sofreu uma overdose? E, afinal, quem era e onde está o protagonista de todo este desastre? Como fugiu da prisão? E quem são os demais envolvidos nesta história?

Neste livro, Rúben Pacheco Correia leva o leitor a sentir-se parte da investigação, fá-lo vibrar a cada pista conseguida, levantar voo a cada viagem, e concluir que, nesta história, a realidade supera mesmo a ficção.

That Hair written by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida and translated by Eric M. B. Becker. 

A Best Translation of the Year at World Literature Today

Finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize

That Hair consists of universal subjects of racism, feminism, colonialism, immigration, identity and memory.

"The story of my curly hair," says Mila, the narrator of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida's autobiographically inspired tragicomedy, "intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the underlying story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics." Mila is the Luanda-born daughter of a black Angolan mother and a white Portuguese father.

She arrives in Lisbon at the tender age of three, and feels like an outsider from the jump. Through the lens of young Mila's indomitably curly hair, her story interweaves memories of childhood and adolescence, family lore spanning four generations, and present-day reflections on the internal and external tensions of a European and African identity.

In layered and luscious prose, That Hair enriches and deepens a global conversation, challenging in necessary ways our understanding of racism, feminism, and the double inheritance of colonialism, not yet fifty years removed from Angola's independence. It's the story of coming of age as a black woman in a nation at the edge of Europe that is also rapidly changing, of being considered an outsider in one's own country, and the impossibility of"returning" to a homeland one doesn't in fact know.

Author

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida was born in Luanda, Angola, and grew up in Lisbon. She has a PhD in literary theory from the University of Lisbon. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta.com, Words Without Borders, Granta Portugal, Observador, Somos Libros, Ler, serrote, and 451.

Translator

Eric M. B. Becker is a literary translator, critic, writer, and editor of Words without Borders. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, PEN America, and the Louis Armstrong House Museum.

Becker has translated work by Mia Couto, Paulo Coelho, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, and Daniel Galera, among others. His work has been published in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Freeman's, Electric Literature, and many other publications. He is editor of several anthologies and magazine features devoted to the literature of Brazil.

Language English

Print length 200 pages

Item weight 159g

Dimensions 12.85 × 1.07 × 19.84 cm

Whites Can Dance Too written by Kalaf Epalanga and translated by Daniel Hahn.

Hours before performing at one of Europe's most iconic music festivals, Kalaf is detained on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Trapped in his precarity, his thoughts soon strum to the beat of kuduro, the blistering, techno-infused Angolan music which has taken him from Luanda to Kristiansund, Beirut to Lisbon. Shifting between his reflections while incarcerated, the stories of a friend at the heart of Lisbon's dance scene and those of the immigration policeman who holds Kalaf's fate in his hands, Whites Can Dance Too is at once an exhilarating novel and a transporting paean to cultural roots, to freedom and to love.

Author

Kalaf Epalanga is an Angolan musician and writer.

Best known internationally for fronting the Lisbon-based dance collective Buraka Som Sistema, he is a celebrated columnist in Angola and Portugal.

Whites Can Dance Too is his acclaimed debut novel; it was first published in Portugal by Editorial Caminho (2017). Epalanga is currently based in Berlin.

Translator

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, with thirty-something books to his name. He has translated fiction from Portuguese, Spanish and French (from Europe, Africa and the Americas) and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. He has written works of narrative non-fiction for adults and the text of a picture-book for children; and edited a number of reference books including "The Ultimate Book Guides", a series of reading guides for children and teenagers.

His books have won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award.

Language English 

ISBN-10 0571371442

ISBN-13 978-0571371440

Item weight 276 g

Dimensions 12.8 × 1.37 × 19.81 cmg

On EarthAs It is Beneath written by Ana Paula Maia and Translated by Padma Viswanathan.

INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED 2026

On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison's waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins.  Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witness.

Author

From the award-winning writer Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, a haunting exploration of the memories of three men and the reverberations of slavery, colonialism, and empire.

Three men haunt these pages. Perhaps they are tormented ghosts who cannot find rest. All three have been expelled in some way, sent on solitary journeys into the night. Celestino, an old slave trader, returns to the solitude of his home and garden after a life of horrors. Boa Morte da Silva, an Angolan who served on the Portuguese side in the Colonial War and has become a valet in Lisbon, writes endlessly to his daughter, asking for her forgiveness. And Bruma, an enslaved man, initiates a young writer, Eça de Queirós, into the world of literature.

In discrete yet overlapping tales, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s Three Stories of Forgetting explores the experiences of those who live within the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire. In these unstable chapters, we find incarnations of our despair at the questions that history does not answer, and allegories that may yet reveal new ways of seeing through the dark.

Language English

Print length 304 pages

ISBN-10 0374612099

ISBN-13 978-0374612092

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.

The Turner of Silences written by Mia Couto translated by David Brookshaw. 

Mwanito Vitalcio was eleven when he saw a woman for the first time, and the sight so surprised him he burst into tears. Mwanito's been living in a big-game park for eight years. The only people he knows are his father, his brother, an uncle, and a servant. He's been told that rest of the world is dead, that all roads are sad, that they wait for an apology from God. In the place his father calls Jezoosalem, Mwanito has been told that crying and praying are the same thing. Both, it seems, are forbidden.

The 8th novel by NY Times-acclaimed Mia Couto, The Tuner of Silences is the story of Mwanito's struggle to reconstruct a family history that his father is unable to discuss. With the young woman's arrival in Jezoosalem, however, the silence of the past quickly breaks down, and both his father's story and the world are heard once more. The Tuner of Silences was heralded as one of the most important books to be published in France in 2011, and remains a shocking portrait of the intergenerational legacies of war. Available for the first time in English.

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 professor of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol (London), and the General Editor of the HiPLA Monograph Series. He is the translator of six books by Couto, including Sleepwalking Land and The Last Flight of the Flamingo.

Language English 

length 224 pages

ISBN: 9781926845951

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.

A Short Book On the Great Earthquake Lisbon 1855 is written by Rui Tavares and translated by Rita Matos. 

The Great Earthquake that devastated Lisbon in 1755 was one of the most significant events in Portuguese history. Its political, social and cultural repercussions permanently changed the face of the city and the country, and were at the heart of heated theo-logical and philosophical debate among some of the brightest minds of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe.

A Short Book on the Great Earthquake tells the story of this extraordinary event with an innovative approach that takes us on an exciting journey through what happened on that fateful day, both from the perspective of some of those who experienced it first-hand, and from a wider contextual point of view. For instance, what links the 1755 Earthquake to September 11, 2001, the

2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD? What would Lisbon look like today if the earthquake had never happened? What was its cultural impact in 18th-century Europe? How do catastrophes change our perception of the world?

The answers provided in this book are unexpected, alternative and, ultimately, audacious.

Author

 Rui Tavares (Lisbon, 1972) holds a degree in History from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, a master's degree from the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, and a doctorate from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of several books, including Pequeno Livro do Grande Terramoto (Small Book of the Great Earthquake) — winner of the 2005 RTP/Público prize for best essay — and O Censor Iluminado (The Enlightened Censor) - awarded by the Portuguese Academy of History as the best book on Portuguese history in 2019.

224 pages

A Very Short History of Portugal is written by A.H. De Oliveira Marques. 

From the moment the first men set foot in the Iberian Peninsula, around 2000 b.C., until the end of the «New State» and the independence of the ex‑colonies, through various kings, sea voyages to India and other destinations, these pages have a lot to tell.

The history of Portugal is long and complex, and so Oliveira Marques, one of the most renowned Portuguese historians, began by writing it down in three volumes which became a classic of Portuguese historiography. Based on them, he also prepared this very short version, which summarises all crucial events. This rare, small‑format book retains all the rigour and historical breadth of longer editions, and is as useful for scholars as it is for inquisitive people.

The Book of Disquiet is written by Fernando Pessoa and translated by William Boyd.

"Readers with a particular interest in modernism will find this work indispensable." Publishers Weekly

"Pessoa's amazing personality is as beguiling and mysterious as his unique poetic output." William Boyd

A self-deprecating reflection on the sheer distance between the loftiness of feelings and the humdrum reality of life, The Book of Disquiet is a classic of existentialist literature.

Author

Fernando Pessoa, one of the founders of modernism, was born in Lisbon in 1888. Most of Pessoa's writing was not published during his lifetime: The Book of Disquiet was first published in Portugal in 1982.

Translator 

Foste a maneira mais bonita de errar written by Pedro Chagas Freitas.

 Foste a maneira mais bonita de errar, o livro em que Pedro Chagas Freitas volta aos grandes romances, com uma história de força e superação. Um livro de amores possíveis e impossíveis carregados de determinação e força de viver. 

Uma história de uma mulher corajosa que, mesmo depois de a vida a levar a enfrentar vários desafios, nunca desiste de ser quem é e aprende a reinventar-se num mundo que insiste em não deixá-la ser forte. 

Mais do que um romance, este livro é uma lição de vida, contada no estilo único de Pedro Chagas Freitas, que parece sussurrar-nos ao ouvido.

Uma história incrível, viciante e comovente, que nos mostra a importância do amor e de nunca deixarmos de ser quem somos.

Autor

Pedro Chagas Freitas escreve. Publicou 22 das mais de 150 obras que já criou. Foi, ou ainda é, jornalista, redactor publicitário, guionista, operário fabril, barman, nadador salvador, jogador de futebol, e muitas outras coisas igualmente desinteressantes. Orienta desorientadas sessões de escrita criativa por todo o país e arredores. Gosta de gatos, de cães e de pessoas. Não gosta de eufemismos e de bacalhau assado.
Tem mais de 100.000 fãs na sua página de Facebook. 

written by Clarice Lispector. Language in Portuguese.

Há livros que desviam para sempre o curso de uma literatura inteira. Não o fazem sozinhos - ora ecoam as vanguardas da sua época, ora rasgam preceitos vigentes; em casos mais raros, antecipam um certo futuro.

É assim com Perto do coração selvagem, romance de estreia de Clarice Lispector. Publicado no ano em que a escritora completou 23 anos, conta a história de Joana: desde a infância marcada pela morte do pai e pela solidão do colégio interno, até à idade adulta, com um casamento longe do sonhado, a maternidade, a paixão por um homem enigmático e, por fim, uma inevitável dispersão do eu, da identidade, do rumo da vida.

Joana é uma mulher supremamente livre, não confinável aos limites do seu tempo, indisponível para conter a sua voz, o seu pensamento ou o seu desejo vital, determinada a não dar passos que não sejam os seus rumo ao coração da existência. Enquanto acedemos à intimidade desta criação de Clarice - por entre admiráveis epifanias e monólogos interiores - chegamos mais perto da genialidade da sua criadora.

Dialogando, mesmo se inadvertidamente, com Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse ou James Joyce, na reflexão sobre as inquietações da modernidade, este romance subsiste como um clarão na literatura em lingua portuguesa, valendo a Clarice Lispector toda a admiração dos leitores, da crítica e dos pares.

Author: Luciany Aparecida, Language: Portuguese,

No primeiro romance que assina com o próprio nome, Luciany Aparecida narra, com uma prosa lírica e de força singular, os trágicos acontecimentos que cercam um pequeno vilarejo rural no interior da Bahia.

Maria Teresa vive com as suas mães num casarão antigo, cheio de histórias dos seus antepassados, de frente para um lajedo de pedra. Pelo peitoril, corre um roseiral, apenas com rosas brancas, e, no caminho diante da casa, passam personagens memoráveis: Mané da Gaita, músico e vendedor de doce, e a sua cadela Chula; Lai, ex-prostituta e a sua madrinha; os gémeos Cícero e António, filhos do dono da venda; Toni de Maximiliana, vaqueiro matador de gado, filho da sacerdotisa Mãe Maximiliana dos Santos; e Zezito, único filho homem de Luzia, e por quem Maria Teresa se apaixona e com quem planeia casar.

Ao experimentar o vestido de noiva num sábado de festa, um dia antes do casamento, uma tragédia envolvendo um fazendeiro violento e arbitrário atinge Maria Teresa e muda a sua vida para sempre.

Narrando o drama que se torna central, ela vai pouco a pouco revelando ao leitor os sentimentos mais profundos dos que habitam Mata Doce. Surgem então, numa delicada costura narrativa, antigas brigas familiares, segredos do passado, sentimentos clandestinos e muitos mistérios.

Mata Doce é um romance épico, delicado e poderoso, que entrelaça passado e presente numa obra majestosa, e desde já um marco da literatura brasileira contemporânea.

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 Maria Isaac, Language Portuguese,

«São as histórias que nos matam, quando não conseguimos abandoná-las, nem mudar quem somos nelas.

» Miguel Godói viveu um casamento feliz, que deveria ter durado para sempre.

Mas acidentes acontecem, as histórias mudam, os heróis também morrem, e até os casamentos felizes chegam ao fim.

Agora sozinho numa vida que não escolheu para si, aprende a conviver com as limitações de um corpo partido e mal emendado, com uma epilepsia peculiar que o tornou num doente crónico, e a fazer sentido do mundo entre as suas memórias imperfeitas.

Numa manhã de inverno, Miguel conhece uma misteriosa criança que o leva até a uma casa desconhecida na Madragoa à procura de respostas sobre o livro enigmático que chegou às suas mãos.

O que lá encontra, porém, são ainda mais perguntas e uma possibilidade inesperada: um novo amor por uma mulher.

Perdido há demasiado tempo no lugar-comum do sofrimento, onde as dores familiares transformam a nostalgia na escolha preferencial, Miguel Godói enfrentará agora a vertigem de alcançar uma esperança até aqui desconhecida.

Autor

Maria Isaac nasceu no Norte de Portugal, numa pequena vila cheia de espaço e onde as pessoas sorriem e falam alto. É autora do livro Onde Cantam os Grilos, finalista do Prémio Fundação Eça de Queiroz 2019, e a voz do podcast literário Palavra. Atualmente, vive em Lisboa, rodeada de livros.