Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: No Prompt

Since there is still no prompt this week, I opted to feature works of Portuguese literature, following my previous features of French, German, Spanish, and Italian literature. This aligns with my pivot toward European literature, following my initial focus on works of Asian literature for the first half of the year. Without ado, here are works of Portuguese literature I am looking forward to.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you choose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: The Elephant’s Journey
Author: José Saramago
Translator (from Portuguese): Margaret Jull Costa
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Date: 2010 (2008)
No. of Pages: 205

Synopsis: 

In 1551, King João III of Portugal decided to give Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon, along with his keeper, Subhro. The two have been living in dismal conditions, forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds. When it occurs to the king and queen that an elephant might be an appropriate wedding gift, everyone rushes to get them ready: Subhro is given two new suits of clothes and Solomon a long-overdue scrub.

Accompanied by the archduke, his new bride, and the royal guard, our unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformation and civil war. They make their way through the storied cities of northern Italy: Genoa, Piacenza, Mantua, Verona, Venice, and Trent, where the Council of Trent is in session. They brave the Alps and the terrifying Isarco and Brenner passes; they sail across the Mediterranean Sea and up the Inn River. (Elephants, it turns out, are natural sailors.) At last they make their grand entry into the imperial city of Vienna.

Title: The Stone Raft
Author: José Saramago
Translator (from Portuguese): Giovanni Pontiero
Publisher: The Harvill Press
Publishing Date: 2000 (1986)
No. of Pages: 263

Synopsis: 

What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating the Iberian peninsula?

In Saramago’s lovely fable, the new island is sent spinning, like a great stone raft, towards the Azores. While the authorities panic and tourists and investors flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by portents that burden them into a bemusing sense of responsibility. Travelling at first packed into a car, then into a wagon, they take to the road to explore the limits of their now finite land, adrift in a world made new by this radical shift in perspective.

Title: Blindness
Author: José Saramago
Translator (from Portuguese): Giovanni Pontiero
Publisher: Mariner Books
Publishing Date: 1999 (1995)
No. of Pages: 326

Synopsis: 

A city is hit by an epidemic of “white blindness” which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers – among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears – through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness is a powerful portrayal of man’s worst appetites and weaknesses – and man’s ultimately exhilarating spirit.

Title: The Crime of Father Amaro
Author: José Maria Eça de Queirós

Synopsis: 

Eça de Queiro’s novel is a lurid satire of clerical corruption in a town in Portugal during a period before and after the 1871 Paris Commune.

“Young, virile Father Amaro arrives in Leira and is taken in as a lodger by São Joaneira. Her budding, devout, dewy-lipped daughter Amélia is soon lusted after by the young priest. What ensues is a secret love affair amidst a host of compelling minor characters: Canon Dias, a priest, glutton, and Sao Joaneira’s lover; Dona Maria da Assuncao, a wealthy widow with a roomful of religious relics, agog at any hint of sex; Joao Eduardo, repressed atheist, free-thinker, and suitor to Amelia. Eca’s incisive critique flies like a shattering mirror, jabbing everything from the hypocrisy of a rich and powerful Church, to the provincialism of Portuguese society of the time.

The Crime of Father Amaro inspired a series of magnificent paintings by the Portuguese artist Paula Rego, one of which graces the cover of this edition. The novel was also made into a controversial film, El Crimen del Padre Amaro by Mexican director Carlos Carrera in 2002. (Source: Goodreads)

Title: The Inquisitors’ Manual
Author: António Lobo Antunes

Synopsis: 

Senhor Francisco, a once powerful state minister and a personal friend of the Portuguese dictator Salazar, is incapacitated by a stroke. As he lies dying in a Lisbon nursing home he reviews his life and his loves. The emotional turmoil enveloping Francisco’s family finally catches up with him when the Carnation Revolution severs the dictatorship and the old regime tumbles. Beset by paranoia, Senhor Francisco remains a large but empty shadow of his former self. An international best-seller and the novel that established Antunes’s reputation in Europe, The Inquisitors’ Manual is a rewarding and stunning piece of art that shows the damage tyranny does to each layer of society. (Source: Goodreads)

Title: Signs of Fire
Author: Jorge de Sena

Synopsis: 

Signs of Fire is set in Portugal at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Jorge is a young student on holiday with his uncle in the resort of Figueira da Foz. His uncle shelters two Spaniards, fugitives from the police. Portugal supports Franco: the two men if captured would be returned to certain death.

Jorge joins his usual summer crowd of friends. Some of them plot to steal a boat, rescue the Spaniards and smuggle them out of Portugal to join up with the Republicans. Jorge falls in love with Mercedes, the sister of a conspirator, but she is engaged to Almeida, a sailor co-opted to pilot the boat to Spain. (Source: Goodreads)