Five Portuguese Novels

I am continuing my world book tour by looking at books from Portugal. This is also, in part, a tour of my favourite holiday destinations. I really like Portugal and, fortunately, also really like Portuguese books (in English), so the combination of the two is even better.

My favourite Portuguese author is Jose Saramago. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so you may well have heard of him before or even read some of his books, but if you haven’t then I would highly recommend you give him a go.

Saramago’s books come with some warnings though! First, you will quickly realise that he is not a big fan of punctuation. This is not ideal if you are on public transport and can see your stop rapidly approaching because you may be some considerable distance from the next full stop. You will also find that the author steps into the book on a few occasions to provide some comment on how the book is unfolding or about the characters. So don’t expect a “silent” author. Plus Saramago does go through some philosophical musings at times, but just go with it. His books are very good. Be that Blindness, its (sort of) sequel Seeing, The Double or one his others.

Here are five Portuguese novels (although not all by Portuguese authors) to whet your appetite.



Title: Blindness

Author: Jose Saramago

Number of pages: 309

Opening words:

The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light speared. At the pedestrian crossing, the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing like a zebra, however, that is what is it called. The motorists kept an impatient foot on the clutch, leaving their cars at the ready, advancing, retreating like nervous horses that can sense the whiplash about to be inflicted. The pedestrians have just finished crossing but the sign allowing the cars to go will be delayed for some seconds, some people maintain that this delay, while apparently so insignificant, has only to be multiplied by the thousand of traffic lights that exist in the city and by the successive changes of their three colours to produce one of the most serious causes of traffic jams or bottlenecks, to use the more current term.

The green light came on at last, the cars moved off briskly, but then it became clear that not all of them were equally quick off the mark. The car at the head of the middle lane had stopped, there must be some mechanical fault, a loose accelerator pedal, a gear lever that has stuck, problem with the suspension, jammed brakes, breakdown in the electrical circuit, unless he has simply run out of gas, it would not be the first time such a thing has happened. The next group of pedestrians to gather at the crossing see the driver of the stationery car wave his hands behind the windshield, while the cars behind him frantically sound their horns. Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it would not hold up traffic, they bat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, first to one side then the other, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movement of his mouth he appears to repeating some words, not one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind.

What’s it about?

Suddenly, while stopped at a red light in his car, a man goes blind. A "white evil" obliterates his vision plunging him into light as fathomless and impenetrable as the darkest night. A crowd gathers and one man is kind enough to see him home. It is not long, however, before an epidemic of the new blindness causes the government to act in the most authoritarian and fearful of ways, throwing many of the recently disabled into a mental asylum, guarded by scared, trigger-happy soldiers, left to fend for themselves.

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Title: The Tragedy Of The Street Of Flowers

Author: Eca de Queiroz

Number of Pages: 358

Extract:

It was in the Teatro da Trindade, at a performance of Bluebeard.

The second act had already begun, and the chorus of courtesans were just bowing and retreating in an arc to the back of the stage, when, in a box to the left of the circle, the rusty creak of a stiff door lock and the scrape of a chair drew a few distracted glances. A rather tall woman was standing in the box, slowly undoing the silver clasps on a long black silk cape lined with fur; the hood of the cape was still up, but nevertheless afforded an impression of large, dark eyes in an oval, aquiline face; whether natural or artificial, the faint shadows beneath her eyes lent seriousness and profundity to her gaze. With her was a thin woman, wearing a gold watch chain strung across a vulgar silk bodice; the thin woman took her companion's cape from her, and she, with a light, delicate movement, turned and stood very still, studying the stage.

What’s it about?

One night at the theatre, Vitor da Silva, a young law graduate, sees a strikingly beautiful woman. Her name is Genoveva. Originally from Madeira, she has lived for many years in Paris. Her rich French husband has died and she is in Lisbon with a view possibly to settling there. Genoveva, however, is not what she seems. Behind the mutual attraction between her and Vitor lies a terrible secret.

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Title: The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

Author: Richard Zimler

Number of Pages: 464

Extract:

When I was eight, in the Christian year of fourteen ninety‐four, I read about the sacred ibises who helped Moses cross an Ethiopian swamp riddled with snakes. I drew a scythe‐beaked creature in scarlet and black with my Uncle Abraham’s dyes and inks. He held it up for inspection. “Silver eyes?” he questioned.

“Reflecting Moses, how could they be any other color.”

Uncle kissed my brow. “From this day on, you will be my apprentice. I will help you change thorns to roses, and I swear to protect you from the dangers which dance along the way. The pages that are doors will open to our touch.” How could I have known that I would one day fail him so completely? Imagine being outside time. That the past and future are revolving around you, and you cannot place yourself properly. That your body, your receptacle, has been numbed free of history. Because I feel this way, I can see clearly when and where the evil started: four days ago, on the twenty‐second of Nisan, in our Judiaria Pequena, the Little Jewish Quarter of the Alfama District of Lisbon.

What’s it about?

The year is 1506, and the streets of Lisbon are seething with fear and suspicion when Abraham Zarco is found dead, a naked girl at his side. Abraham was a renowned kabbalist, a practitioner of the arcane mysteries of the Jewish tradition at a time when the Jews of Portugal were forced to convert to Christianity. Berekiah, a talented young manuscript illuminator, investigates his uncle's murder, and discovers in the kabbalah clues that lead him into the labyrinth of secrets in which the Jews sought to hide from their persecutors.

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Title: Adam Runaway

Author: Peter Prince

Number of pages: 480

Excerpt:

Gomes woke at exactly ten minutes before dawn, just as he always did. His first action, also his daily habit, was to drive from his bed the girl who had shared it with him in the night. There was always a girl -- without her presence, whoever she might be, Gomes found it difficult to sleep. Last night he had used the new one, Doroteia, a skinny wench who thought she was aged thirteen or fourteen, she wasn't sure, who had arrived in the city from the Trás-os-Montes a couple of weeks ago. Gomes -- whose duties as head clerk in the firm of Hanaway's also encompassed the supervision of the household -- preferred to hire new serving girls from that or another part of the kingdom distant from Lisbon. This pretty much removed from the realm of possibility the danger that he would be visited by irate masculine relatives, demanding satisfaction or reparation for the loss of their daughter's or sister's innocence.

What’s it about?

It is 1721 and young Adam Hanaway, devastated by his father's sudden death, leaves England to seek his fortune in Lisbon, where his uncle is a successful merchant. But almost nothing turns out as Adam planned. His family's welcome is cool, and Adam's rise is thwarted by his uncle's treacherous clerk and also by a certain personal trait. He's not a coward exactly, but he is inclined to boldly put himself in dangerous situations and then at the last minute run away -- hence the nickname.
Adam certainly has a lot to learn. The Inquisition grips Portugal, and those who befriend Adam may not be well intentioned. His mother and sisters wait for him to rescue them from poverty, but he is distracted by a number of local beauties. Then he commits a social faux pas so severe he forever ruins his chances for making a good match. Swept up in a struggle that will require him to come into his manhood -- the struggle between wickedness and humanity -- it seems Adam will never find his way to success, to love, or to peace with the life fate has given him.


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Title: The Book of Disquiet

Author: Fernando Pessoa

Number of pages: 272

Excerpt:

1
Sometimes I think I will never leave Rua dos Douradores. Once written down, that seems to me like eternity.

What’s it about?

Sitting at his desk, Bernardo Soares imagined himself free forever of Rua dos Douradores, of his boss Vasques, of Moreira the book-keeper, of all the other employees, the errand boy, the post boy, even the cat. But if he left them all tomorrow and discarded the suit of clothes he wears, what else would he do? Because he would have to do something. And what suit would he wear? Because he would have to wear another suit.

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The Music of Chance

Title: The Music of Chance

Author: Paul Auster

Number of pages: 198

Extract:

For one whole year he did nothing but drive, traveling back and forth across America as he waited for the money to run out. He hadn't expected it to go on that long, but one thing kept leading to another, and by the time Nashe understood what was happening to him, he was past the point of wanting it to end. Three days into the thirteenth month, he met up with the kid who called himself Jackpot. It was one of those random, accidental encounters that seem to materialize out of thin air-a twig that breaks off in the wind and suddenly lands at your feet. Had it occurred at any other moment, it is doubtful that Nashe would have opened his mouth. But because he had already given up, he figured there was nothing to lose anymore, he saw the stranger as a reprieve, as a last chance to do something for himself before it was too late. And just like that, he went ahead and did it. Without the slightest tremor of fear, Nashe closed his eyes and jumped.

What’s it about?

Following the death of his father, Jim Nashe takes to the open road in pursuit of a 'life of freedom'. But as the money runs out he finds that his sense of disillusionment has only been compounded by his year on the road. However, after picking up Pozzi, a hitchhiking gambler, Nashe finds himself drawn into a dangerous game of high-stakes poker with two eccentric and reclusive millionaires.

What I thought:

I have to confess that Paul Auster is one of my favourite authors. I love the way he writes and the darkness of his stories. This book was no exception – both in terms of the darkness in it and how much I enjoyed it.

This book tells the tale of the consequences of a gamble going wrong. Whilst this might not sound like the best selling point for a book it almost has a ‘fairy tale’ quality to it at times – but not in a childish way. You’ll see what I mean if you read the book (and you should!). The book also really vividly portrays a sense of being trapped (both literally and figuratively) by making bad choices and risking it all and losing. It ss a really well written book and the themes of freedom (or otherwise) and searching were really engaging. Read this book – and if you have never read any Paul Auster before, this is a really great place to start.

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Five Dystopian Tales

I do like a good dystopian tale – if you are unfamiliar with that term, they are tales where society takes a turn for the worst and is potentially headed towards oblivion (so the opposite of utopia, which is about the creation of an ideal society). Cheery!

Given that I have previously said that I am not really a fan of science fiction, it is probably strange for me to be so enthusiastic about dystopian novels. It is often probably a fine line, and down to the reader, which side of the dystopia/ science fiction line some book falls. But what I like is a book that is set in a recognisable society and then some element changes in that society that sends it heading in a different and more perilous direction. From my perspective, I would characterise them as “what if” novels.

Taking The Day of the Triffids as an example- the author, John Wyndham, objected to his books being termed as science fiction, incidentally - you have a society that is ‘normal’ and recognisable and then a meteor shower turns the vast majority of the population blind (and some triffids - killer plants - are thrown in for good measure). Society and government breaks down. With most of the population suddenly blind, the few who are sighted are potentially at an advantage. But those who are blind also have a vested interest in identifying those who can see and forcing them to become their eyes.

I will leave you with a particular thought on this book. The Day of the Triffids may well prompt you to wonder what you would do if a similar situation befell us. I strongly suspect that you are likely to assume that you would be amongst those who are sighted, but the reality in the book is that you are much more likely to be amongst the blind.

On that cheery note, here are five dystopian tales to challenge your reality. I have read all of them (and actually some of them more than once) and I hope they inspire you to explore this genre or to delve deeper into it. If you have books of this ilk to recommend, do let me know.



Title: The Day of the Triffids

Author: John Wyndham

Number of pages: 272

Extract:

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else-though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence-a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a hard, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry.

The way I came to miss the end of the world-well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years-was sheer accident: like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it. In the nature of things a good many somebodies are always in hospital, and the law of averages had picked on me to be one of them a week or so before. It might just as easily have been the week before that-in which case I’d not be writing now: I’d not be here at all. But chance played it not only that I should be in hospital at that particular time, but that my eyes, and indeed my whole head, should be wreathed in bandages-and that’s why I have to be grateful to whoever orders these averages. At the time, however, I was only peevish, wondering what in thunder went on, for I had been in the place long enough to know that, next to the matron, the clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital.

Without a clock the place simply couldn’t work. Each second there’s someone consulting it on births, deaths, doses, meals, lights, talking, working, sleeping, resting, visiting, dressing, washing-and hitherto it had decreed that someone should begin to wash and tidy me up at exactly three minutes after 7 A.M. That was one of the best reasons I had for appreciating a private room. In a public ward the messy proceeding would have taken place a whole unnecessary hour earlier. But here, today, clocks of varying reliability were continuing to strike eight in all directions-and still nobody had shown up.

What’s it about?

When a freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth's population blind, Bill Masen - one of the lucky few to keep his sight - finds himself trapped in a London jammed with sightless mobs who prey on those who can still see. But another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop them the Triffids - walking carnivorous plants with lethal stingers - rise up as humanity stumbles and falls . . .

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Title: The Death of Grass

Author: John Christopher

Number of pages: 208

Extract:

As sometimes happens, death healed a family rift.

When Hilda Custance was widowed in the early summer of 1939, she wrote, for the first time since her marriage thirteen years before, to her father. Their moos touched – hers longing for the hills of Westmorland after the grim seasons of London, and his of loneliness and the desire to see his only daughter again, and his unknown grandsons, before he died. The boys, who were away at school, had not been brought back for the funeral, and at the end of the summer term they returned to the small house at Richmond only for a night, before, with their mother, they travelled north. In the train, John, the younger boy, said “But why do we never have anything to do with Grandfather Beverley?” His mother looked out of the window at the tarnished grimy environs of London, wavering, as though with fatigue, in the heat of the day.

She said vaguely “It’s hard to know how these things happen. Quarrels begin, and neither person stops them, and they become silences, and nobody breaks them.”

What’s it about?

At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain they are left alone, and society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brothers farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits.

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Title: The Plot Against America

Author: Philip Roth

Number of Pages: 591

Extract:

Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews.

When the first shock came in June of 1940—the nomination for the presidency of Charles A. Lindbergh, America's international aviation hero, by the Republican Convention at Philadelphia—my father was thirty-nine, an insurance agent with a grade school education, earning a little under fifty dollars a week, enough for the basic bills to be paid on time but for little more. My mother—who'd wanted to go to teachers' college but couldn't because of the expense, who'd lived at home working as an office secretary after finishing high school, who'd kept us from feeling poor during the worst of the Depression by budgeting the earnings my father turned over to her each Friday as efficiently as she ran the household—was thirty-six. My brother, Sandy, a seventh-grader with a prodigy's talent for drawing, was twelve, and I, a third-grader a term ahead of himself—and an embryonic stamp collector inspired like millions of kids by the country's foremost philatelist, President Roosevelt—was seven.

What’s it about?

In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt sought and won an unprecedented third presidential term. Britain was already under German attack and the U.S. had not entered the war. While in office, Roosevelt continued to support Great Britain, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war, American neutrality was no longer sustainable.

In Philip Roth's new novel, things turn out very differently. The Plot Against America imagines what might have happened if flying ace and staunch isolationist Charles Lindbergh defeated Roosevelt in 1940. Instead of going to war, an anti-Semitic Lindbergh signs a peace pact with Germany and Japan, and his policies create an atmosphere of religious hatred.

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Title: Brave New World

Author: Aldous Huxley

Number of Pages: 288

Extract:

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.

What’s it about?

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...

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Title: Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

Number of pages: 184

Extract:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

What’s it about?

The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

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Earth Girl

Title: Earth Girl

Author: Janet Edwards

Number of pages: 358

Extract:

It was on Wallam-Crane day that I finally decided what I was going to do for my degree course Foundation year. I’d had a mail about it from Issette that morning. It showed her jumping up and down on her bed in her sleep suit, waving a pillow, and singing: “Make your mind up, Jarra! Do it! Do it! Make up, make up, make up your mind girl!” She was singing it to the tune of the new song by Zen Arrath. Issette is totally powered on him, but I don’t think much of his legs.

Issette is my best friend. We’re both 17 and we’d been in Nursery together, and had neighbouring rooms all through Home and Next Step. She’d put in her application for the Medical Foundation course months ago. Issette is organized and reliable. I’m not. Most of my other friends had made their decisions too, except for Keon who was planning to do absolutely nothing. He’d been doing that all through school and I had to admit he was good at it.

I didn’t fancy being another Keon, so I had to decide what to do, and I had to do it fast. The deadline for applying for courses was the day after the holiday.


What’s it about?

Jarra is stuck on Earth while the rest of humanity portals around the universe. But can she prove to the norms that she's more than just an Earth Girl? 2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can't travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She's an 'ape', a 'throwback', but this is one ape girl who won't give in. Jarra invents a fake background for herself - as a normal child of Military parents - and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra's role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates - a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.

What I thought:

This book is aimed at young adults – a genre that holds some appeal for me, but I often find that the books don’t live up to expectations (maybe because, it’s fair to say, I’m not the target audience). I also have mixed feelings about sci-fi, so I approached this book with mixed feelings. Would the combination of a book aimed at young adults AND that is science fiction be a winner or would it prove to be another disappointment…

Well, as it turned out, I thought it was a good book! Not only did I think it was good, but my partner then read it and also thought it was good, and my partner then lent it to a colleague, who enjoyed it as well. So, that was a pretty sound endorsement from a somewhat small and unscientific sampling of people.

I thought the plot was good and can see why it would appeal to teenagers – there were various themes such as acceptance, challenging people’s views and acting confident even if you don’t feel it (which are actually pretty handy reminders for adults too). I thought these were well handled and that it worked well as a book. The themes came through, and it wasn’t ‘preachy’ or contrived. Jarra was a strong female lead and wasn’t just some one-dimensional or stereotypical portrayal of a girl. I found that I cared about what happened to her and the build toward a dramatic ending was well done.

I had a couple of fairly minor quibbles with the book:

For some reason I felt as though the characters were speaking with American accents. I soon got over this though – and found their English accents. Perhaps this tells you more about me than the book though?

Plus, a lot of the technology the characters used were extensions of technology with which we are already very familiar. I thought that things might have been less recognisable to 21st century readers. Given that I probably have no more insight into the future than the author and will not be alive in 2788 to know how such things actually turn out, it’s probably not worth getting into an argument about though.

This book is actually the first in a trilogy – the others being Earth Star and Earth Flight. So, if you enjoy this first book, there is more to come. Earth Girl is currently being sold for the bargain price of 99p on Kindle at the moment.

Read the first chapter here and visit the author’s website here.

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