O Dom de Estar Vivo (The Gift of Being Alive) – 1967
Please note that all books are in Portuguese, except the Aquarium, which has also an English translation
Book I
Book II
Book II
O Dom de Estar Vivo (The Gift of Being Alive) – 1967
(...) it is no small satisfaction to find someone breathing so naturally that it almost seems unusual. This is the great quality that stands out in O Dom de Estar Vivo: the fluency, the spontaneity, the easy vocabulary invention. (...) Alice Sampaio is a novelist of indignation and, as we all know, indignation is a very much alive feeling. This alone would be enough to give her our applause. She is also a writer who does not turn her face away from certain problems that have a lot to do with her condition as a woman at this moment in History, at this crucial point in which a different confrontation between the two sexes is being prepared.
José Saramago, Seara Nova, No. 1468, February 1968
Epigraphs:
Chapter 1 - Summer smiles
Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero Summer?
T. S. Eliot
Chapter 2 - Garlic and saphires in the mud
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
T. S. Eliot
Chapter 3 - The fire and the rose
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave
T. S. Eliot