In this short text by Teolinda Gersão, brief yet of rare poetic density, there is no pathos. A thin, quiet voice simply expresses the world around it. The story has the whiteness of dawn – a whiteness made of long silences, of those moments when angels pass.

SEAN JAMES ROSE, LIRE

Les Anges presents itself as a vivid, tenacious interior narrative, marked by a brevity that in no way diminishes its intensity; (…) the condensed nature of the text, the touching naïveté of the narrator, that small voice that seems to rise from the depths of her being – all this prompts us to place this story among the books that matter.

B. LONGRE, SITARTMAGAZINE

In “Os anjos”, the young Ilda leafs through an almanac as she looks at the world: like an illiterate child amused by a succession of images. Until the moment of revelation: the child’s eyes going back and forth from images to letters and from letters to images; the letters clumping together in sprays, in bundles; the sprays forming words, becoming things; these things that words are, suddenly becoming alike; another world, the world of signs, appearing before her newly opened eyes, and the awareness that it is impossible ever to go back from such an experience. It is not only to reading that this young narrator has just been initiated, but to the deciphering of the world.
Among the angels – of which, as Teolinda Gersão teaches us, there are so many kinds – the one who came to Mary brought no greater wonder than this.

BRIGITTE PAULINO-NETO, ALORS

This book is so brief that, if one were to summarise it, everything would be told – everything except the incredible poetry, the incredible language of Teolinda Gersão. We hear the voice of a little girl, Ilda, whose mother slips into a kind of undefined madness. Whose father drinks too much. Whose ailing grandfather tells the story of his village swallowed by water. Ilda hears voices that haunt her. This little book is a great novel. Long after closing it, one still hears Ilda’s voice; one would like to take her in one’s arms and listen to her again. That is the mark of masterpieces.

CHRISTOPHE TISON, COSMOPOLITAN

With this dream-like, novella-fable, Teolinda Gersão has managed to create new and suprising effects through elements as archaic as human instincts, and their integration in culture.

LINDA SANTOS COSTA, PÚBLICO

A perfect novella.

JOSÉ EMÍLIO NELSON, JORNAL DE NOTÍCIAS

I would call this  story, above all ,the descent into a double memory. A descent that rises up within us until we hear the unorthodox angels singing. Os Anjos  against the flow? So be it.

JORGE LISTOPAD, JORNAL DE LETRAS

With this dream-like, novella-fable, Teolinda Gersão has managed to create new and suprising effects through elements as archaic as human instincts, and their integration in culture.

LINDA SANTOS COSTA, PÚBLICO

A perfect novella.

JOSÉ EMÍLIO NELSON, JORNAL DE NOTÍCIAS

I would call this  story, above all ,the descent into a double memory. A descent that rises up within us until we hear the unorthodox angels singing. Os Anjos  against the flow? So be it.

JORGE LISTOPAD, JORNAL DE LETRAS

“La autora dispone un microcosmos familiar y rural y explora en él algunos de los misterios más elementales que rodean la vida humana: la pulsión de huir, la enfermedad, la fragilidad del cuerpo, el sinsentido de las religiones normativas y la necesidad de la mística libre, que se identifica al final del relato con el propio milagro de los vínculo humanos y naturales, en una especie de síntesis spinoziana.”

ANDREU NAVARRA (Los Ángeles)

Les Anges, transl.by Elisabeth Monteiro Rodrigues, Paris, Autrement, 2003

OS ANJOS

Os Anjos é uma história de segredos e revelações. No centro de uma família disfuncional, governada por um triângulo amoroso clandestino, uma criança tenta compreender os adultos e o seu mundo de tabus, vazios e silêncios.