City of Ulysses/ A Cidade de Ulisses
A man and a woman meet and fall in love in Lisbon. Their story, which is also a love story with a city, leads the reader along multiple paths, between myth and History, reality and desire, literature and the visual arts, past and present, the relations between men and women, the civilizational crisis and the need to rethink the world.
“Tourists go in search of places where they can escape from themselves, and at once trade them for others, fleeing ever farther away. Travellers go in search of themselves in other places, and no effort seems too great, no step excessive, so great is their desire to reach their destination. With luck, they manage to find the city they were looking for. At least once in their lives.”
Teolinda’s universe, rendered with exquisite delicacy in a fitting setting: Lisbon, a fatal territory for excessive loves and incurable passions.
— Francisco José Viegas
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“A vibrant hymn to Lisbon’s unified yet multiple history—harmonious and dissonant at once. An excellent novel, of great aesthetic quality in form and a deeply committed testament to the city in its content.” MIGUEL REAL, JORNAL DE LETRAS
“Gersão’s book could be alternately titled: Lisbon: What the Tourist Does Not See. She does not shy from the seedy, disquieting corruption that rules over the city”
CASEY WALKER, LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS“A warning to puritans of feeling, to sceptical and aseptic moralists: City of Ulysses tells a love story that ends well. A scandal, therefore, by the standards of the contemporary novel.” INÊS PEDROSA, LER
“While recounting a thrilling love affair, the author sets out to portray—both physically andmorally—the legendary and/or real Lisbon. It is gratifying to read such a carefully conceived novel in these times of literary neglect.” FÁBIO LUCAS
“It is this meticulous and wandering weave, moving between memory and a city, that makes City of Ulysses a narrative as intimate as it is recognisable—from the tastes of lovers full of future to the streets where the past is the only possibility.” SARA FIGUEIREDO COSTA, Os Meus Livros
“Without sparing words—because there is simply no reason to fear them—we are faced with an excellent novel.” PEDRO TEIXEIRA NEVES , PNETliteratura
“Teolinda’s universe rendered with extreme delicacy and within an expected setting: Lisbon, a fatal territory for excessive loves and incurable passions.” FRANCISCO JOSÉ VIEGAS
One of our finest short-story writers, one of our finest novelists, T.G., exactly 30 years after the memorable publication of The Silence and 15 years after The Tree of Words (a novel which, together with Baía dos Tigres by Pedro Rosa Mendes, stands at the foundation of the new phase of post-Empire Portuguese literature), now brings out City of Ulysses, a vibrant hymn to the one and many, harmonious and dissonant histories of Lisbon. (…) Lisbon is the great collective character of the novel, the soil from which the lives of Paulo and Cecília draw their meaning.” MIGUEL REAL, JORNAL DE LETRAS
“City of Ulysses goes far beyond being merely a novel about Lisbon and the rewriting of the myth of Ulysses. Admirably well written, the text reveals (…) a classical kind of seduction exercised by the nineteenth-century novel, both in the tightly structured plotting of the intrigue and in the construction of the dominant character (…), offering a life lesson with an ethical and social dimension that is communicated intensely, without neglecting what in Literature is always most important: the artistic meaning of what is written. (…) The book tells an intoxicating, all-encompassing love story between Paulo and Cecília (…), and it explores, without any trace of Manichaeism, the controversial dimensions of the themes of Journey, Otherness and Exposure. (…) What Teolinda does is write life.” MARIA ALZIRA SEIXO, JORNAL DE LETRAS
City of Ulysses is a rare and exalted moment in contemporary Portuguese prose. It is an inner journey through Lisbon – a Lisbon reinvented at every step in a writing that is simple because it is erudite, and erudite by the very nature of its expression. It has been years since reading a text of this kind has awakened in me so much happiness and pleasure. And the few words with which I say this are a poor tribute to such a beautiful and moving book. It is a great love story because it is a great novel about people, streets and a city.” BAPTISTA BASTOS, JORNAL DE NEGÓCIOS“Lisbon is more than a setting: it is theme, substance, and character. It is there that the lovers meet again and project their passion. By “singing” the city and linking it to the myth of Ulysses, Teolinda Gersão renews—luminously and originally—a centuries-old literary imagination, while paying tribute to the writers who helped shape it. “ ADÍLIA MARTINS DE CARVALHO
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USA
City of Ulysses, Victoria, TX, Dalkey Archive Press, 2017
Italy
La Città di Ulisse,transl. Alessandra Della Penna, Perugia, Edizioni dell’Urogallo, 2013
Published in Brasil -
Prémio Ciranda, 2012
Prémio António Quadros, 2013
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https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/amor-e-lisboa/ (TV, RTP)
https://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/porque-teolinda-gersao-escreveu-a-cidade-de ulisses/ (TV, RTP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UICUMeiFJFk (TV, RTP2)
https://amensagem.pt/2024/01/26/a-lenda-de-ulisses-que-tornou-lisboa-numa-cidade-literaria-a-conversa-com-teolinda-gersao-na-brasileira-do-chiado/ (Clube de Leitura de Lisboa)