Landscape with Woman and Sea in the Background/Paisagem com mulher e mar ao fundo
Portugal. The overseas colonies. A portrait of Salazar and of the country under the dictatorship. A woman, a mother, who loses a son in the colonial war, the most unjust and absurd of all wars. Her voice is that of all those who, for more than four decades, were silenced by the power of the oppressor.
First published in 1982, this is a novel that deserves to be revisited, reminding the reader that there was a time when the sea was an arid landscape and Portugal a country that kept quiet and obeyed
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The characters are caught in a web of subterranean forces. Fascism, as it appears in this book, is one (obviously detestable) figure of this play of forces. If, on the one hand, this makes it more abstract (the reference is to O.S., Oliveira Salazar), on the other it reveals it in a light unknown in our fiction. One of the most curious aspects is the way an unambiguous refusal of oppression is combined with a very subtle awareness of the ambivalence of the forces with which we are confronted. The book introduces into the male/female polarity a complexity that makes the very letter of the text literally enthralling.
EDUARDO PRADO COELHO, JORNAL DE LETRAS
The long period of resignation, the gradual awakening and the act of political liberation, with their respective subjective and personal consequences – all this is reflected in T.G.’s novels in a way that clearly rises above the specific political situation in Portugal. The author shows how, in a tough and protracted process of development, long-internalised forces of inertia and those of breakthrough and revolt repeatedly collide, and she traces, in all their richness, the arduous paths of liberation and opening in every imaginable sphere of society, art and culture.
GESA HASEBRINK, DIE SCHWESTERN DER MARIANNE ALCOFORADO
In T.G.’s work, the new literary discourse understands itself as a quest that seeks to break open the habitual connections between language and reality. In this way, social conventions, authorities, marginalisations and forms of alienation can be questioned, and paths towards overcoming them can be indicated. The novels stand simultaneously in the tradition of subjectivism and of social critique. Their approach to external reality serves to prevent structures of domination, which can now be challenged from a clear, individually consolidated position – a position whose exploration is the very focus of this subjectivist interest.
HELMUT SIEPMANN, PORTUGIESISCHE LITERATUR DES 19. U. 20. JAHRHUNDERTS
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Paisagem com mulher e mar ao fundo Portugal. O ultramar. Um retrato de Salazar e do país durante a ditadura. Uma mulher, mãe, que perde um filho na guerra colonial, a mais injusta e absurda de todas as guerras. A sua voz é a de todos os que, durante mais de quatro décadas, foram silenciados pelo poder do opressor. Publicado originalmente em 1982, este é um romance que importa revisitar para lembrar ao leitor que houve um tempo em que o mar era paisagem árida e Portugal um país que calava e obedecia.