Short stories
Cais-do-Sodré té Salamansa
Not translated into English
Orlanda Amarílis · 1974
Synopsis
Seven stories that follow women of the archipelago between Lisbon and the islands. A maid grows old in a servant's room and no longer dares to go home; another waits for a husband who writes less and less; another returns to her homeland and recognises no one there. The first and the last texts give the book its two-point title, a Lisbon quay and a beach on São Vicente, and tell the whole journey.
Context
The book is the first its author published, thirty years after her debut in a magazine, and it appeared in Coimbra from Centelha, one hundred and twenty-four pages, the second volume of a fiction series the house had just launched. She wrote it in Portugal and not in the archipelago, which shows in the place the stories give to Lisbon. The seven texts were written over several years and published all at once, which explains why they echo one another without forming a cycle.
Who it is for
A short volume, in Portuguese, with no French translation. Each story can be read on its own, but the whole assumes familiarity with the two shores, the archipelago and the Lisbon emigration.
Prizes and reception
The collection is regarded as having renewed the Cape Verdean short story and as having given a woman, the first, a central place in this literature.