O Dom de Estar Vivo (The Gift of Being Alive) – 1967
Please note that all books are in Portuguese. Titles in English are mere literal translations
Book I
Book II
O Dom de Estar Vivo (The Gift of Being Alive) – 1967
A truly remarkable book, with bigger than life characters (women and men, but mostly women) far ahead of their time, in a claustrophobic country crystallized in the past. It is also a kind of subversive mirror of Portugal under the dictatorship, before the 1960’s wave of emigration, the Carnation Revolution (25 April 1974), the return of the Portuguese from the former colonies and its move towards Europe and the world radically changed it. And it is an extraordinary tribute to the role of education as a liberating force for every human being, women in particular.
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