Novel
Hora di bai
Not translated into English
Manuel Ferreira · 1962
Synopsis
The drought has emptied São Nicolau. Families reach São Vicente by sea, believing they will find work at the port of Mindelo, and find only hunger, the queue and the shacks. The book moves in short chapters, changing characters each time: a mother, a docker, a child, a shopkeeper. At the end of the story, a ship loads contract workers for the plantations of São Tomé.
Context
The book grew out of what the author had seen in the islands at the time of the great drought. It appeared in Lisbon in 1962 under the Textos Vértice imprint, close to the neo-realist journal of the same name: two hundred and seventy-eight pages, fifty-three chapters. A revised edition followed the very next year, under a cover by João da Câmara Leme, and a third from Plátano in 1972. The title is borrowed from a morna by Eugénio Tavares, whose verses recur throughout the narrative.
Who it is for
A novel with multiple voices, without a main character, whose short chapters pass from one group to another. It is read in Portuguese, as no French edition has appeared.
Prizes and reception
Ricardo Malheiros Prize of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, dated 1962 by some and 1963 by others. The journal Vértice advertised it in June 1963.