In his own words, from his author’s biography at the start of Gin and Tonic Tales: ‘Mário-Henrique Leiria was born in Lisbon in 1923. He went to the Escola de Belas Artes, and left rather hastily. Between 1949 and 1951 he …

  Rui Zink was born in Lisbon in 1961. He is a writer, university lecturer and cultural commentator. As a writer he has published eight novels, including Hotel Lusitano (his debut, first published in 1987, re-released in 2011), Os Surfistas (The Surfers, published in …

Rui Cardoso Martins is a Portuguese writer whose works include long and short fiction, screenplays, TV comedy shows (including a popular puppetry series of political satire) and award-winning journalism. Born in Portalegre in 1967, he published his first novel in …

Mia Couto was born of Portuguese parents in Beira, Mozambique, in 1955. In 1974, he went to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) to study medicine, but became involved in nationalist politics immediately before and after the coup in Lisbon, which brought …

Maria Velho da Costa is a Portuguese writer, the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Born in Lisbon in 1938, she became infamous in 1972 with the publication of Nova cartas portuguesas (New Portuguese …

Poetry was Olga Teixeira Gonçalves’ first love, and she published half-a-dozen collections in the decade from 1973. A Floresta em Bremerhaven (The Forest in Bremerhaven, 1975) was her first novel on emigration, and it went into 4 reprints and won …