Novel
The Crossing: A Story of East Timor
Crónica de uma Travessia: A Época do Ai-Dik-Funam
Luís Cardoso · 1997
Synopsis
The narrator, whose name is never given, remembers his childhood in Portuguese Timor, following his father's postings as a nurse, notably on the island of Atauro, among the folk tales. He passes through several seminaries in the hope of a scholarship for Portugal, and his relatives hand down Timorese traditions and myths to him before his departure. In Lisbon, where he studies with other Timorese, the journey to the distant colonial homeland turns out to be an exile, which other exiles join after the Indonesian invasion, among them his father.
Context
Published in Lisbon in 1997 by Publicações Dom Quixote, with a preface by José Eduardo Agualusa, who sees in it a rescue of memory, the book received a prize from the Sociedade da Língua Portuguesa in 1998. It is part novel, part memoir, and Claudiany Pereira considers that it helps to found in literature the imagination of a new nation. Translated into French in 2000 by Jacques Parsi for Métailié, into German in 2001 for Aufbau, then into English in 2002 by Margaret Jull Costa for Granta, it was then presented in Germany as the only Timorese novel available in the language.
Who it is for
For entering the literature of East Timor through the story of a colonial childhood and a departure for Lisbon.
Prizes and reception
A German review of 2002 wished the book many readers, despite the crowd of its characters.
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