Novel
O Delfim
Not translated into English
José Cardoso Pires · 1968
Synopsis
A writer returns to hunt duck at Gafeira, a village on the edge of a lagoon, where he had already come a year earlier. In the meantime, the servant of Tomás Palma Bravo, the heir who rules over the lagoon, has been found dead in the couple's bed, his wife Maria das Mercês has been found floating in the water, and the master has disappeared. No one says what happened. The visitor questions the innkeeper and the villagers, rereads his notes, builds versions, undoes them, proposes others.
Context
The book was written under censorship and takes the form of an inquiry that it does not sustain: multiple versions, a broken narrative, no solution. What this form conceals, critics showed as early as 1977, is the seizure of the lagoon by the people of the Gafeira as the power of the Palma Bravo falls. Its author thus placed himself between neorealism and the nouveau roman, refusing the writer who guides his reader. In 1970, the book was translated into Spanish, by Seix Barral, and into French, by Gallimard. Cardoso Pires wrote a screenplay from it that was not filmed; the film that Fernando Lopes drew from it in 2002 follows that of Vasco Pulido Valente.
Who it is for
A novel translated into French. The narrative changes voice and time without warning, and one must accept that no version is given as true.
Prizes and reception
The first book by a living Portuguese author to be the subject of an article in the Times Literary Supplement, in January 1970, even before its English translation.
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