The Keyboards and Three Stories with Angels/Os teclados e três histórias com anjos
This volume brings together in a single book two of Teolinda Gersão’s most acclaimed works: the novella Os teclados (The Keyboards, 1999, winner of the Fernando Namora Prize and the Critics’ Prize of the International Association of Literary Critics) and the short story collection O mensageiro e outras histórias com anjos (The Messenger and Other Stories with Angels, 2003).
About the latter, Christophe Tison wrote in Cosmopolitan:
“This book is so brief that, if we were to summarise it, everything would be said. Everything, except the incredible poetry, the incredible language of Teolinda Gersão. This small book is a great novel. Long after we have closed it, we still hear Ilda’s voice; we wish we could take her with us and go on listening to her. That is the hallmark of masterpieces.”
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Os teclados e três histórias com anjos
Esta edição reúne num mesmo livro dois dos mais elogiados escritos de Teolinda Gersão: a novela Os teclados (de 1999, que recebeu o Prémio Fernando Namora e o Prémio da Crítica da Associação Internacional dos Críticos Literários) e o livro de contos O mensageiro e outras histórias com anjos (2003). Sobre o último, Christophe Tison escreveu na Cosmopolitan: «Este livro é tão breve que, se o resumirmos, tudo ficará dito. Tudo, excepto a incrível poesia, a incrível linguagem de Teolinda Gersão. Este pequeno livro é um grande romance. Muito tempo depois de o termos fechado, ouvimos a voz de Ilda, gostaríamos de levá-la connosco e continuar a ouvi-la. É essa a marca das obras-primas.»
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“In a brief narrative, the author succeeds in granting her protagonist remarkable psychological depth. The metaphor of the trapeze is no coincidence in this sublime and deeply musical book. It unfolds as a fable: one in which the primary addressee of creation is the creator themself, and in which the only truly legitimate competition is with oneself.”
Rodrigues da Silva, Jornal de Letras
[on The Keyboards]
“In this text—short yet marked by rare poetic density—there is no pathos. A voice simply articulates the world that surrounds it.”
Sean James Rose, Lire
[on the French edition Les Anges]
“To listen to oneself; to listen to others, to the world, to nature, to the universe, to the cosmos—to listen to them as music, to listen to them within music—forms the underlying ground of The Keyboards. Not listening as an alternative to vision, but rather the balance between the two as an alternative to a culture entirely dominated by the image.”
Mário Vieira de Carvalho, Saberes no Tempo
[on The Keyboards]
“From one of the most original and innovative voices in contemporary Portuguese fiction, this is a narrative that leaves its mark long after the book has been closed.”
Sarah Oling
[on The Messenger and Other Stories with Angels]