The Woman Who Trapped the Rain and Other Stories/ A mulher que prendeu a chuva e outras histórias
The Woman Who Trapped the Rain brings together 14 short stories that begin in everyday life but imperceptibly open onto other worlds – dreamlike, fantastic, terrifying or absurd – which nonetheless still belong to us and remain the place where we live.
“I was running forward, into the night, on the back of a maddened horse that was dragging me nowhere. There were no points of reference in the landscape, we galloped flat out, fast, ever faster and yet without moving through space. I didn’t know where I was and could only vaguely remember my own name. But I hadn’t forgotten yours. Nor the fact that you were dead.”
(from the story “Night Horses”)
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In these stories, judgement finds in narrative the form it needs in order to take shape – whether it is merely the summary judgement one neighbour passes on another (…), or the difficult verdict a child ends up reaching about her mother’s cruelty (…), from which an even harder decision will follow: to fall silent, that is, not to tell the story.
Within the narrative drive or compulsion that seems to move even the most silent, inward-turned characters, nothing is neutral, and what these stories reveal – the darkest ones as much as the lightest – is a kind of analysis of the necessity to judge.
In the fine mesh woven by this necessity, not even God escapes having a story told to him – that is, being forced to listen to a story so that he may know that not even God remains the same between the beginning and the end of the words he hears, if he exists to hear them: “For one cannot at the same time listen and not listen.”
GUSTAVO RUBIM, PÚBLICO, ÍPSILON, 2007
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Morocco
A Mulher que Prendeu a Chuva e Outras Histórias, transl. Said Benabdelouahed, Rabat, Saad Warzazi Éd., 2010
Colombia
“La Mujer que Atrapó la Lluvia”, De la Otra Orilla del Atlántico: Portugal en la FILBO 2013, transl. Sergio Corella, Lisboa, Direcção-Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas, 2013
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Prémio Máxima de Literatura, 2008
Prémio Literário Fundação Inês de Castro, 2008
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A mulher que prendeu a chuva e outras histórias
A mulher que prendeu a chuva reúne 14 contos que partem da vida quotidiana mas se abrem, insensivelmente, a outros mundos – oníricos, fantásticos, terríveis ou absurdos –, que nem por isso deixam de nos pertencer e de ser o lugar onde habitamos.
«Corria para a frente, na noite, no dorso de um cavalo enlouquecido, que me arrastava, para nenhum lugar. Não havia pontos de referência na paisagem, cavalgávamos à desfilada, depressa, cada vez mais depressa, e no entanto sem avançar no espaço. Não sabia onde estava e recordava-me só vagamente do meu nome. Mas não esquecera o teu. Nem o facto de que estavas morto.» (do conto «Cavalos nocturnos»)