Books in Portuguese that Should Be Translated into English

When I decided to create this blog about books, I thought it a good idea to write it in English, although it is not my first language. I don’t regret that choice in the slightest, since it has allowed me to continue practising the language and to interact with fellow readers from all over the world. However, it has also a downside. Sometimes I mention books originally written in Portuguese that are not available in English and, thus, that the majority of you can’t read.

Today’s post will add to this conundrum, seeing that it’s exclusively about books that, to the best of my knowledge, haven’t yet been translated into English but that should have been. Some of these are available in other languages besides Portuguese, such as Spanish and French, though.

 

Livro by José Luís Peixoto

Set in part in the 1960s, Livro delves into the Portuguese emigration to France through the story of a specific family. José Luís Peixoto used more than words to tell this story, which emphasises how difficult it can be to achieve a better life. A circle drawn around particular words helps to convey an important plot point. ‘Livro’ means ‘book’ in Portuguese, and it is not only the title of this novel, but also the name of a crucial character.

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Books in Primary Colours: Red

In order to succinctly comment on some of the books that I’ve either read before I started blogging or that I feel that I should talk about more often, I decided to write a three-part series of posts about three books whose covers are predominantly yellow, blue or red. Besides their covers being dominated by a primary colour, these books just have one more thing in common – they still have a place on my shelves.

This third and last instalment is all about the colour red. Or it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, when I came up with the idea for this series of posts, I didn’t realise that I had already written in depth about almost all of the books on my shelves whose covers are predominantly red, since they are mostly recent reads. So, as you can see from the picture above, I’m slightly cheating. Two of the books have white covers. But, in my defence, it’s the elements in red that stand out.

 

Amor de Perdição (Love of Perdition) by Camilo Castelo Branco

This is one of the most famous books by the Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco. It was written in the 19th century and is an example of the romanticism movement. The forbidden love between Simão Botelho and Teresa Albuquerque is at the core of this novel and is used to condemn the social impositions of the time when it came to relationships.