Portuguese Language Summer / Autumn 2022 Reading Group

Can the most enchanting of sounds narrate disenchantment? With his novel O Plantador de Abóboras (Sonata para uma neblina) [The Pumpkin Planter (Sonata for the Mist)], Luís Cardoso appears to demonstrate that the intersecting voices of a narrative are like a Swiss army knife, offering in any given moment the exact tool to open whatever is hidden within a painting, within a character’s name, within a figure or historical moment. A woman waits and paints and therefore thinks. Through her pass episodes, possibilities, failures, memories, ancestors, animals, countries, men, history. And what remains with her from all of this? Spanning the three major conflicts that shook East Timor during the 20th century – the Great Rebellion, Japanese occupation during the Second World War and the Indonesian occupation lasting until 1999 – O Plantador de Abóboras is a tale of resistance and the broken promises of revolution.

In a society that has fused with the market – everything can be bought, everything can be sold – people begin to pay using words.

The initial strangeness gives way to enthusiasm.

After all, how could speaking remain free? There are six thousand languages in the world.

Six thousand ways of saying ecology, and so little ecology.

Six thousand ways of saying peace, and so little peace.

Six thousand ways of saying together, and yet it’s each one for themselves.

A semi-finalist of the Oceanos Prize in 2019, Ecologia [Ecology] is a dystopian novel about a society not too dissimilar from our own in which two powerful corporations come together to attempt to monetise humanity’s most precious resource – language.

Although medicine was a natural choice for Cecília, following in the footsteps of her father, she does not correspond to the image one expects of a paediatrician. A doctor who is not at all maternal, with little affection for children and zero patience for their mothers and fathers.

And yet she has a successful practice as a sought-after neonatologist. Gradually, however, she ends up losing ground to a humanist paediatrician, who works with doulas, midwives and accompanies home births. Even the obstetrician with whom she has always worked seems to prefer the humanist.

Cecília undertakes an obsessive dive into the universe of humanised childbirth and alternative medicine, despite these being practices she deeply despises. In parallel, she has a relationship with a married man, whose son she eventually delivers. This child will awaken unexpected feelings and attitudes in her.

With caustic humour and deft, succinct prose, Andréa del Fuego’s A pediatra [The Paediatrician] offers an insightful look at human behaviour and key contemporary issues, such as ethics, empathy and the limits that can so easily be crossed by those in a position of power.

Excerpt translated by Jethro Soutar.

This is the story of the improbable friendship that develops on the island of Santiago, Cape Verde, between a young Charles Darwin and Siríaco, an old black man and ex-slave, who suffers from vitiligo. In truth, Siríaco really did exist – he was the “tiger-boy”, educated in the royal court and integrated into the so-called “exotic court” of Queen D. Maria I, alongside an entourage of twelve male and female dwarves from Africa. The young Charles Darwin also spent sixteen days on the island of Santiago, where he conducted initial research for On the Origin of Species.

Stradling the territories of history and imagination, this is a novel about friendship, race, racism, empire and memory.