The House of the Horse’s Head /A casa de cabeça de cavalo
In an ironic, carnivalesque, and serialised register, the narrator(s) of The Horse-Head House stage for the reader’s delight the comic, tragic, and grotesque spectacle of nineteenth-century lives – only to highlight, in caricature or parody, certain social aspects that persist into the twenty-first century.
At the galloping pace of the horse of Time, the House is dragged along in a dizzying, endless race to which the reader is also summoned, for they too become, without realising it, an inhabitant of the House, even after reaching the final page and closing the book.
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The admirable spectral scene that T.G. constructs for the reader’s enchantment is, at its core, a reclamation of death through the horse’s wild, senseless gallop. It is therefore no surprise to read in the papers that the jury of the Grand Prize for Fiction has distinguished The House of the Horse’s Head. It is a thoroughly deserved consecration of a writer who, in 1995, published her finest book.
EDUARDO PRADO COELHO, PÚBLICO
That is what we call fiction – the “fiction of truth”. The game we give ourselves over to here is guided by the free and assured hand of a tireless and magnificent storyteller.
FERNANDO J. B. MARTINHO, JORNAL DE LETRAS
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Croatian (Kuca s Konjskom Glavom) translated by Tanja Tarbuk
Romanian (Casa Umbrelor) translated Micaela Ghitescu, Bucarest, Editura Vivaldi, 2003
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“shortlisted” para o Prémio Europeu de Romance Aristeion em 1996
Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela da Associação Portuguesa de Escritores, 1995;
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A casa de cabeça de cavalo
Num registo irónico, carnavalesco e folhetinesco, o(s) narrador(es) de A Casa da Cabeça de Cavalo encenam para deleite do leitor o espectáculo cómico, trágico ou grotesco de vidas do século XIX - para afinal salientar, caricaturados ou parodiados, alguns aspectos sociais que perduram no século XXI.
No ritmo veloz do cavalo do Tempo, a Casa é arrastada numa corrida vertiginosa e interminável para a qual o leitor é convocado, porque também ele se torna, sem dar conta, um habitante da Casa, mesmo depois de chegar à última página e de fechar o livro.