Portuguese Books - Page 3

Baltasar and Blimunda

Jose Saramago

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I wanted to like it much more 2 out of 5 stars.
12 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Noted literary critic Harold Bloom calls Jose Saramago a genius (a term he reserves for extremely few living authors) and perhaps the world's greatest living novelist. For that reason and Saramago's Nobel prize, and because Amazon's editorial review referred to this book as Saramago's best-loved story, and because of the interesting back cover blurb, I thought "Baltasar and Blimunda" would make a good entry point into what I thought would be the beginning of my enjoyment of his works. I was really looking forward to it. And the result?

Painful!

What a chore to get to the end! Never have I taken so long to read a 300-plus page novel. I haven't taken this long since I read "Absalom, Absalom!" which is much more difficult, but also far more interesting. Saramago might be smart, but much of his commentary, liberally sprinkled throughout the story via direct addresses to the reader, comes off more like sarcasm and simple smart-alecky remarks than as insight. He enjoys attacking the church and religious faith in general. Nothing wrong with that, of course. And occasionally he does it well, especially when he depicts, matter-of-factly, the insatiable sexual appetites of supposedly celibate priests and nuns. But he doesn't always serve his story well while engaging in these sarcastic attacks. They're mostly asides.

The story, the characters and the setting have wonderful potential, but instead of drama we get mild humor that occasionally puts a smile on our face but rarely makes us laugh. Saramago also treats us to lengthy descriptions of work and laundry lists of scenery, machines, processes and everyday events. I'm not looking for James Bond here, but let the characters do SOMETHING interesting. Instead we get rich details. Too rich. What we don't get nearly enough of is dialogue. Saramago doesn't let his characters speak. He thinks readers are more interested in his voice than those of the characters. And as if those weren't enough obstacles, Saramago throws words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs at us without much punctuation at all, even periods sometimes. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for this, but I'm just a reader, not a Nobel prize-winning genius!

Now, some readers will take strong exception to what I'm saying; they'll pat themselves on the back and think, "Oh, he just doesn't get it." Or "He doesn't have the patience or intellect for 'challenging' literature." Well let's just take the quotes off of the word literature for a second and call this what it is: a story. And it's not a well-told story at that. Nor is it particularly challenging. Some of the incidents are interesting, but the plot is disjointed, the motivations seem irrelevant if not unconvincing. The political and religious commentary is gratuitous and lacking in insight. The love story provides erotic tidbits without much feeling. In short, there is just a lot wrong with this story. And I've read plenty of challenging literature. A few moments at the beginning and near the end are interesting, but the heart of the story -- the love affair and the building of the cathedral -- is simply boring. And one of the major characters disappears suddenly without any emotional high point whatsoever. So pat yourselves on the back and say that my review wasn't helpful, if you must, but at least I'm being honest with myself and with you.

I'll give Saramago and magical realism another attempt, but after "Baltasar and Blimunda" and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," I'm no longer going in with great expectations.

Editorial Review:

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition. National bestseller. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

A Orillas de Rio Piedra Me Sente y Llore

Paulo Coelho

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Nada mejor que un encuentro... o reencuentro? 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

y si es con algo que hemos dejado pendiente en el pasado se torna mas interesante. Una obra de analisis hacia adentro pero sin dejar por un lado ese hermosa pluma de coelho y se desarrolla una preciosa historia de amor en el que las cosas no estan muy claras pero la pareja poco a poco y con lecciones maravillosas aclaran todo

es tan rica en su escritura que llega el momento que estas sentado junto a los protagonistas participando en la historia
fabuloso!

COMFORTING 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Este libro fue el primero de Coelho que lei asi que tiene un lugar especial, una vez termine me converti en seguidora de este autor maravilloso. El libro es suave y para mejor describirlo es "Warm and comforting" facil de leer y una sentada puedes terminarlo.

Editorial Review:

Viaje a través delos pirineos junto a dos amantes en una busqueda espiritual sin tiempo, y descubra los prufundos secretos del amor y la vida en esta nueva novela comovedora, estilulante y mágica escrita a la manera de su aclamado libro El Alquimista,por el incomparable narrador Paulo Coelho.

Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

Fernando Pessoa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) - a poet who lived most his life in Lisbon, Portugal, and who died in obscurity there - has in recent years gained international recognition as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Now Richard Zenith has collected in a single volume all the major poetry of "one of the most extraordinary poetic talents the century has produced" (Microsoft Network's Reading Forum). Fernando Pessoa was as much a creator of personas as he was of poetry, prose, and criticism. He wrote under numerous "heteronyms," literary alter egos with fully fleshed identities and writing styles, who supported and criticized each other's work in the margins of his drafts and in the literary journals of the time. From spare minimalism to a revolutionary exuberance that recalls Leaves of Grass, Pessoa's oeuvre was radically new and anticipated contemporary literary concerns to an unnerving degree. The first comprehensive edition of Pessoa's poetry in the English language, Fernando Pessoa & Co. is a work of extraordinary depth and poetic precision. "Zenith's selection of Pessoa is a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century." -- Booklist

Epitaph of a small winner;

Machado de Assis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great book! But make sure you avoid this edition. 2 out of 5 stars.
27 of 32 people found this review helpful.

"Epitaph of a Small Winner" is NOT the title of this book. The original title, "Memorias Posthumas de Bras Cubas," can only be accurately translated as "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas." Why did they give this edition of the book such a weird title? I don't know--probably for the same reason that they didn't translate it well! I read this translation of the book, because the foreward by Susan Sontag led me to believe it would be the best. But though it wasn't awful, it was sufficiently awkward that I had to force my way through it. Granted, I enjoyed the book, because Machado de Assis is a superb master of comic narrative, inverting into parody just about every literary convention of his nineteenth century. But think how much MORE I would have enjoyed it if I had known that there was another translation of the book, which, far from awkward, was masterful and elegant, by the acclaimed translator Gregory Rabassa (of One Hundred Years of Solitude fame). Also to its credit, that other translation correctly renders the title as "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas." So don't make the mistake I made: don't waste your time with any other editions, like the lame-ass one on this page. (I make due apologies to Susan Sontag.) Move your buns over to the page for "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas." And relax! Machado de Assis was an ingenious author, prefiguring such diverse talents as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Franz Kafka, John Barth, and even Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If you like them, you're going to like him.

Editorial Review:

“I am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who has written and is now deceased, but in the sense of one who had died and is now writing.” So begins the posthumous memoir of Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian. Though the grave has given Cubas the distance to examine his rather undistinguished life, it has not dampened his sense of humor. In the tradition of Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shamdy, Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history.

The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Jose Saramago

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Dreadful 1 out of 5 stars.
8 of 25 people found this review helpful.

After reading The year of the death of Ricardo Reis a book I thought was one of the best ever written and Blindness (not quite the best book ever written) I thought by buying this I was in for a good read...wrong!

Jose Saramago continues his bizarre obsession with young women being attracted to decrepid old men (as he does in all his books) The story is thin, uninteresting and leads nowhere and the siege (read massacre) of the Muslims of Lisbon by the 'brave' crusader knights seems to have little to do with the plot apart from add a little sexual sleeze (the gang rape of a Arab woman by crusader knights) and some ill placed Portuguese nationalism.

Love, war, and the fine line between history and fiction 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Readers of Saramago will recognize the protagonist of this disarmingly charming novel from his other work: a reclusive, shy, bachelor who works in a Kafkaesque world as an unseen, undistinguished clerk and who, one day, inexplicably does something that shatters the routine and frees him from the daily grind. In this story, Raimundo Silva is a proofreader and his act of rebellion is to insert a single word --"not"--into the manuscript on the history of the siege of Lisbon. Upon publication, the book states (incorrectly) that foreign crusaders did not help the Portuguese with the 12th-century siege that wrested Lisbon from the Moors.

From such seemingly trite and random events emanate massive life changes (and subversive comedies). When his publisher discovers the embarrassing and costly error, they hire a new boss to oversee the proofreaders. Instead of mistrusting her new charge, however, she is intrigued by his inexplicable act of subversiveness, and she subtly (well, not that subtly) recommends that he write his own book, an entry in the genre of alternative history: what would have happened if the Crusaders had indeed turned down King Afonso's request for aid? Silva takes up the challenge, and the remainder of the Saramago's novel alternates (often within the same sentence) between Silva's imaginary book and his subsequent life in Lisbon.

At the most obvious level, Saramago is commenting on the tension between historiography and history, between fiction and veracity. Furthermore, there are many parallels--in themes, in characters, in style, in plot--between this book and Saramago's later novel, "All the Names." And, as always, the author's snakelike, page-long sentences demand much from the reader even as they offer insight, beauty, wit, and comedy.

What's unexpected here, however, is the depth of the twin love stories that develop in both the novel and the novel-within-the-novel. "I don't know how people loved at that time," confesses Silva to his own new love about the challenge of writing his book. Her advice: "Invent a love story without any amorous words, . . . assuming such a thing is possible." But his confession and her response are not only about the historical work at hand; they also serve as veiled remarks about the couple's own nascent relationship. In addition to questioning the very nature of how we conceive and recall history, Saramago's novel teases out the human passions behind the parade of names and events selected for the official versions in the chronicles.

Editorial Review:

"Portugal's great fabulist" (Los Angeles Times) brings us a magical tale of love, memory, and the revision of things past in a comically inventive political allegory.

Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

fabulous 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 17 people found this review helpful.

Do yourselves a favour and read the unforgettable poems of the century's least acknowledged, but greatest, poet.

Fernando Pessoa 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Fernando Pessoa is surely the most important 20th century Portuguese poet. The critic Harold Bloom considers Fernando Pessoa (along with Pablo Neruda) the "most representative" poet of the 20th century. This is a considerable feat if one considers other 20th century poets like: T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Valery, Yeats, Lorca etc.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez considers Neruda the "best poet of the 20th century, in any language." I highly admire Neruda, but Pessoa has done more for me, has influenced me much more than has Neruda. Pessoa's invention of several "selves" is a feat of originality without precedent.

Perhaps what most characterizes Pessoa is his strangeness. His strangeness is partly explained by his own life: Pessoa has been called "the man who never was." This is accurate: he is one of the most solitary literary geniuses of modern times. This sense of estrangement is all-pervasive in most of his poems.

The Noble Laureate Gao Xinjiang recently called Pessoa "the most profound poet of the 20th century." I concur with him. ---

Concerning this selection: I suggest the reader buy both the Zenith and Hong translations. It would be best ofcourse if one read his poetry in the original Portuguese. P.S: (Pessoa's complete poems can be found online, in both English, Spanish & Portuguese...)

Editorial Review:

Fernando Pessoa is Portugal's most important contemporary poet. He wrote under several identities, which he called heteronyms: Albet Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Bernardo Soares. He wrote fine poetry under his own name as well, and each of his "voices" is completely different in subject, temperament, and style. This volume brings back into print the comprehensive collection of his work published by Ecco Press in 1986.

La Quinta Montana / The Fifth Mountain

Paulo Coelho

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Lo Definitivo y Lo Inevitable 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Este fue el primer y mas inspirador libro de Paulo Coehlo que he leido. De hecho lo prefiero a EL Alquimista.

Lo he leido tres veces y no dejo de aprender. Esta historia de Elias es motivadora, al ver a un profeta de Dios (Elias) a veces lleno de temor, otras de coraje, otras con fe y muchas otras con duda. Creo que lo que mas me gusta, es esa semejanza a nuestra realidad, pues aunque creamos en Dios, es humano que alguna veces dudemos y estemos en desacuerdo con el.
Si lo lees, te recomiendo que lo hagas lentamente, digiriendolo poco a poco, pues hay muchos mensajes que pueden pasar desapercibidos.

Not as inspirational as The Alchemist...but worth the read! 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

A beautifully witten short novel about a man who believes he is a prophet of God. The story's a little off beat and relies on the reader's belief in a higher being, but it doesn't really matter because the beauty of the novel lies in its language.

Editorial Review:

From one of the world's most popular writers comes a retelling of the biblical story of Elijah that follows in the tradition of Paulo Coelho's international bestseller THE ALCHEMIST. Based on an event that awakened the author to the reality that tragedy is not punishment but challenge, LA QUINTA MONTANA teaches without being didactic, inspires without being sanctimonious.

Memorias Postumas De Bras Cubas/ the Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

Joaquin Maria Machado De Assis

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Editorial Review:

One of the greatest novels of Brazilian Literature, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas is narrated by a dead man who recounts the amorous misadventures of his unheroic life and explains his half-hearted political ambitions. While it is considered the first novel of Brazilian realism, its quirks seem refreshingly modern and make it unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it.

Southwesterly Wind: An Inspector Espinosa Mystery (Inspector Espinosa Mysteries)

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Espinosa's a top rate policeman! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

It's a catchy narrative hook. A young man approaches Inspector Espinosa of the Rio de Janiero police to tell him of a most bizarre prediction: that he knows a murder is about to happen and he knows who the murderer is-himself!

Thus, "Southwesterly Wind begins, the third in the Inspector Espinosa series by Brazilian author Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza. In translation, Garcia-Roza's compelling police procedural is well worth the time. Over the course of the trilogy, the author has developed and presented a respectable policeman and story line.

Gideon (thirty) is a single young man who lives alone with his mother. At his last birthday party, a seer approaches him to predict that before his next birthday, he will murder someone. Unsettling, of course, and Gideon finally yields to the intense pressure of such a prediction to arrange a meeting with Espinosa, in which he confesses of the prediction. He asks for help.

Espinosa is a bit skeptical but a sixth sense tells him not to dismiss the young man so easily. And before long, a co-worker and friend of Gideon's is found dead in the subway, having been run over by the train.

Then another death, this time the clairvoyant who'd made the prediction in the first place. Espinosa is left to tie the clues together and to solve the case, as all the evidence indicates that, despite the fact Gideon knew both victims, he has alibis in both instances.

Garcia-Roza not only masterfully handles the police procedural here, but also underscores the work with landscape and atmosphere of Rio. Espinosa's mannerisms, his personal thoughts and developments which make him into a human being, all are woven intricately into this work. He's a policeman we can admire and respect, a character "worth knowing."

This is a series that should continue. The publisher's comments indicate that the author is a great success in Brazil. Now we have him here in the States. It's a welcomed immigration.

Editorial Review:

Chief of the Copacabana precinct Espinosa is more than happy to interrupt his paperwork when a terrified young man arrives at the station with a bizarre story. A psychic has predicted that he would commit a murder, it seems, and the prediction has become fact in the young man's mind. As the weather changes and the southwesterly wind -- always a sign of dramatic change -- starts up, what at first seems like paranoia becomes brutal reality. Two violent murders occur, and their only link is the lonely, clever man who had sought Espinosa out a few days earlier for help.

In Southwesterly Wind, the third in this atmospheric, erotic series featuring the inimitable Inspector Espinosa, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza once again "breathes fresh air into the crime novel genre." (Los Angeles Times)

The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Thinking is absurd 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

"If i think, it all seems absurd to me; if i feel, it all seems strange; if i desire, he who desires is something inside of me."
Sums up the book perfectly. Pessoa explores one of his many personalities. "The Book of Disquiet" explains, in complete depth and faith, the beauty of a lonely, existential, moment by moment life. He explains the beauty that people forget. He explains the world, his perception, as if every moment were the last.
"The book of disquiet" is one of the most insightful books a person can read, but only if one has imagination and an ability to let go. Bernardo Soars, Pessoa's personality who wrote the book, is extreme and eccentric. It isn't easy reading, and it won't affect you if you can't overlook the fact that life doesn't go on like Soars'; that there is more in thinking, dreaming, and desiring than Soars admits. What makes the book so special is how Soars can forget everything but the thought and the moment, and how he can analyze and critique and put into words something that most of us forget to remember. "The book of disquiet" reminds me, at least, of how to appreciate my own mind. It is the only philosophy-like book that i enjoy (as yet) because it is the real thing and encompasses a forgotten part of real life.

Editorial Review:

The first English-language translation of Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa's only novel. It takes the form of the autobiography of Bernardo Soares, a Lisbon clerk.