Published in 2025
152 pages
Maria Judite de Carvalho (1921-1998) published nine collections of short stories, a novella, and two collections of crónicas over her lifetime. She spent her career in journalism, working as an editor and columnist, she was also known for her French translations and paintings. Widely celebrated in Portugal, Two Lines Press is the first to make her books available in English.
Margaret Jull Costa has worked as a translator for over thirty years, translating the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers, among them novelists: Javier Marías, José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, and Teolinda Gersão, and poets: Fernando Pessoa, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and Ana Luísa Amaral. Her work has brought her many prizes, most recently the Premio Valle-Inclán for On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes.
What is this book about?
Mateus Silva is at a crossroads, but too paralyzed to change direction in a life that he no longer seems to control.
After 25 years away, he has returned to sell his childhood home so he can send his longtime girlfriend—whom he now realizes he may have never loved—on a trip to the Acropolis before her cancer kills her. Mateo sells the home to the first bidder: his wealthy neighbor from childhood, whose wife, Graça, enchanted Mateus as a young man. It was Graça’s beauty, paired with his father’s unfaithfulness, that broke up his family. But the woman he sees now bears little resemblance to the one he remembers, and you can’t move forward by revisiting the past.
