Novel
Barranco de Cegos
Not translated into English
Alves Redol · 1961
Synopsis
In the Ribatejo, in 1891, the son-in-law of Diogo Relvas is buried, a great landowner whose lands stretch as far as the south of the Tagus. The country is bankrupt; Diogo gathers the powerful of his region to force the government to support the land against industry and finance. A feared and hated patriarch, he rules his family, his peers and his servants by a motto, the whip and the sugar, and sees rising around him children, ideas and a Republic that no longer belong to his world.
Context
The novel appeared in 1961, and a second edition revised by the author followed the same year. It belongs to the author's last manner, opened with A Barca dos Sete Lemes, in which social intervention gives way to the characters and their inner development; some chapters take up Emília Adelaide's private diary. The title comes from the Gospel, where blind men lead blind men. The story covers the years from the British ultimatum of 1890 to the post-republic period of 1910.
Who it is for
A long novel of nearly four hundred pages, in Portuguese, with no French translation; the language keeps the turns of phrase and the speech of the Ribatejo.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as Redol's masterpiece and as one of the great Portuguese novels of the twentieth century; thirteenth edition from Caminho.
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