Stories of Walking and Seeing/ Histórias de ver e andar
Stories of Seeing and Walking was the name given by the Arabs to travel narratives in times of discovering new worlds. But it is not necessary to go far in order to change one’s horizon: the unknown lives next door, and also inside our own door. Recognising it – or not – depends on the way we see. And on the way we walk.
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“At the end of each of these short stories we discover that life—our own life—was not exactly where we thought it was. […] Teolinda climbs the stairs of everyday banality to reach the dark chamber of being. […] These are fourteen stories that plunge us into far more than fourteen worlds. For these stories cross the common ground of solitude and despair to arrive at the singular uncommonness of disquiet. And that is the best one can expect from fiction: that it makes us travel to that place that is at once near and distant, fervent and obscure, which we hide beneath the social veil of identity.”
Inês Pedrosa, Expresso
“The art of Teolinda achieves the supreme feat of giving voice to an inner world that has the density of televised reality (the same commonplaces, the same values, the same logic), while simultaneously allowing the other side to emerge—the dark side, glimpsed in the subtext, in dreams, in the grain of the voice, in small details that the titles of the stories bring to the fore (The Oranges, Still Life with Gurnard’s Head), becoming the illuminating (ordering) element of the experience narrated.”
Linda Santos Costa, Público
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Grande Prémio de Conto Camilo Castelo Branco, 2002
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Histórias de ver e andar
Histórias de ver e andar foi o nome dado pelos árabes às narrativas de viagem, em épocas de descobrir mundos. Mas não é necessário ir longe para mudar de horizonte: o desconhecido mora ao lado, e também dentro da nossa porta. Reconhecê-lo – ou não – depende do modo de ver. E do modo de andar.