He recreated a surrealist poetic style that is revered by generations of readers. A parallel can be established with the work of Fernando Pessoa.

It's bitter the heart of a poem.
The left hand unleashes a star,
beneath the other hand
White moves in a pond. Open wounds,
reopen, stitch by the night, re-sews them
With incandescent lines. Bitter. The blood never stops
from salt hand to hand, between the eyes,
alveolus of the mouth.
The blood that moves in the magnifying voices
the dark behind things,
halos in the images of filings, the rough places
you write
between the meteors. Sew you: shines
in the scars. Only the hand moves
on top and the other white hand
works
on surfaces centrifuges. Bitter, bitter. In blood and exercise
of barbaric elegance. Until sitting in the middle
black of the work you die
of compact light.
In radiation helium you explode by shadow
violence
of the crazy nucleus of the soul.

Everything I know about Herberto Helder summed up of the stories that circulate all over the country of his self-isolation, his irascible character prone to all forms of public recognition for his work, not to mention the awards and honors denied that never happened, which creates a series of urban myths around his mysterious personality. I know because I was told that this poet loved by so many that you lose the account, refused to reissue some of his books of poems for no apparent reason, indifferent to the many pleas made by publishers, bookstore owners, friends and readers, because as you know his books in our country, are always sold out. They are gems. Like diamonds, pure and rare. The other story I am about to tell you is not mine, I borrow it, from a friend, a young man who undertook a personal investigation as the whereabouts of the writer, with only one goal to personally professed his admiration and devotion. The search took him to a cafe in Oeiras, where he waited patiently day after day, for a glimpse of his favorite poet, his idol. Due to bad luck, or simply bad information, with him he never crossed, but his poetry still prevails. The last is mine, a future legend, happened at a literary conference which I attended, where the journalist and writer Ines Pedrosa attributes this almost anti-social characteristic of this to insularity, a result of the island isolation which Herberto Helder likes so much is not the only case, because as she said another writer of Madera said that she also avoids public buzz because it disturbs the writing. Maybe that is the point. The important thing is not the messenger is the message. The recreated words. It is the echo of phrases that alert the senses, which exhorts the most beautiful and profound emotions in humans. It is written by Herberto Helder. I say no more, the poetry speaks by itself.

He is a poet, novelist, essayist, scholar, and above all a great defender of his language, Portuguese. His name? Vasco Graça Moura.

no one dies of love, I once
walked around there, I was almost the same,
was a time of moods and shakes,
of syncopated and serious depression, my dear,
but ultimately I did not die, you see, oh, no,
spent time listening to God and jazz music,
I emaciated, but just got away, oh yes,
ah, yes, go into the night, my dear.

we just blow and don't get it right, there is a tightening
of the heart, a tension in the clarinet and
so unhappy was what I felt
but really I never had the way, oh no,
I never had a penchant for kamikaze,
it's all a matter of swing, swing, my dear,
find out the time leave, the time to go, of course, but knowing,
and I do not regret, my dear, oh no, oh yeah.

I'm not really an avid reader of poetry, but there are some authors who I open a big exception, Vasco Graca Moura is one of those names. His writing has a great poetic lyrism, we see in each stanza, the domain that he successfully has on a tongue that loves and worships. It's not that kind of poet who wastes the Portuguese language on rhymes so predictable and needlessly boring. On the contrary, he surprises us in each poem. He sings on this verses life. Even between the lines we imagine the episodes of the daily account of others, and guess his thought. It is a writer who deserves to be enshrined in the pantheon of the monsters of Portuguese literature. It is also one of his greatest champions. It is our Don Quixote fighting the windmills that insist on tampering with the mother language he respects, as an expression of culture, its greatest treasure. In this anthology of the sixty years is evident the maturing that the poet has experience and the development of a writing that has grown over the decades. Happy reading!

It is the fictionalized story about the life the queen that changed Portugal, written by journalist Isabel Stiwell.

The reasons that led me to suggest this book are very simple, first, because it is one of the few books that cover the life, though partly fictionalized, of a queen of Portugal. Fortunately, the publishers have discovered the fountain of financial bliss with the romanticized portraits of women who marked the history of our country. There are hundreds of publications on the market that delve into the doings of the Portuguese kings and until recently, never spoke of the importance of sovereign and princes, who also had a leading role in national growth. Today, the scenario is different and in good time. The second reason obeys the illogic of a mere sentimental reasoning and a very Portuguese feeling also. It is a novel that addresses one of the golden periods of the history of Portugal, the sea voyage that changed the known world, is right in its infancy, and this period of history has a great fascination to me, since school. Isabel Stiwell describes the life of Philippa Lancaster, an English princess, the eldest of a king, coming from a long line of nobles, who come to our country, in order to marry John I, King of Portugal. The book is divided into two parts, which I also found very interesting and surprising; the first is the story of childhood and youth of the princess in the land of his majesty, England. In a second phase, describes her new life as a queen of country planted by the sea. The investigation of the journalist was fruitful, the description of the Portuguese and English courts is very interesting, and the differences in customs, education and the protocols impose in the royal houses. I liked most of all the portrait she did of the queen, who was not confined to the role of productive offspring, Philippa is an educated, erudite and sensitive woman though she did not demonstrated due to the rigidity of her upbringing. Also indirectly, I like the profile of the master of Avis, which after all was one of the few rulers who knew how to take advantage of the capabilities of his wife and all the men who helped him build a nation with wide eyes looking towards the future. Happy reading!

It is the first novel by poet Eduardo Pitta depicting a hidden Portugal in the closet, or maybe not.

It is a book that has a very fluid narrative, you read it in a heartbeat, has a burning nerve writing that feeds the reader's interest until the last page, it could even be a theater play. Forbidden City is the picture of a certain privileged Portugal hidden by social conventions, which in the end, is intolerant, but pretends it is not. The author, Eduardo Pitta is the first Portuguese writer to address homosexuality clearly and shamelessly, and do not deduct dear reader that I intend to point out a potential graphic description of what can be termed as the gay community, none of that, it is a book that covers the life of an homosexual within a traditional family. The metaphors are lean, which pleased me particularly in this reading, although the construction of characters is somewhat superficial. It is the vision of a very particular world, through a narrative that takes us to a privileged universe, unknown for most of the Portuguese. Rarely a Portuguese author writes about this issue of homosexuality as openly and candid as he does and that makes reading attractive. It is not controversial, it is not shameless in its language and it's just a nice book. Happy reading!

It is a tour thru the country and the memories of a love interrupted.

This book is a hybrid novel, on one hand, is the story of a real train trip initiated by the writer Almeida Garrett between Lisbon and Santarem, on the other, is the novelistic narrative of love with a troubled and tragic end, much to the taste of the time and the Portuguese’s, between Charles and Joanna. Interestingly, my attention was raised not towards the burning passion between the two characters, but the analysis that the author makes of our country, which unfortunately is still as present as in the year of 1846. Just change the names. The barons and liberals become... well, I leave it to your discretion. Not to mention the role of the Holy Mother Church in the national goal that is embodied by the character of Friar Denis! To support my thesis, I leave a beautiful passage that will surely make you smile at least, "a great nation can still go on living and expect the best of time, despite the paralysis that boggles the life of the soul for the most part of your body. But a small nation, it is impossible it must die. Ten more years of barons and regimen of matter, and inevitably runs away from the body the dying of Portugal the last breath. “The book of Joao Leitao da Silva, whose pen name is Garrett, can also be considered a contemporary novel, for this mixture of various types of texts, languages ​​and genres in a single publication and that broke definitively with the trend of its time. It is therefore one of the greatest literary works at the national level, because it is the best example of modern Portuguese prose. What remains as a reflection, in my view, is how a text written in the nineteenth century featuring a Portugal on the brink of destruction, which the author believes is due to the lack of political vision of the time before the impotence of his people, is so contemporary? Well, if we look at the fierce criticism of the writer optimistically we can already say that there is no crisis that apparently kills Portugal! Over eight hundred years of our history, we have recounted so many catastrophic episodes that seem to me that if we did not cease to exist as a nation, it's not now that we are going to die as a country. For all these reasons and some I urge you to read or reread as it was in my case, this "Trips thru my land." Happy reading!

Antonio Barroso Cruz writes compulsively, an obsession that impulses him to tell stories about people of other parts of the worlds. He creates scenarios, experiences and everyday journeys that result from his travels, these chance encounters that awaken his imagination towards fiction.

It is a book of chronicles, but different because it has a more personal nature, as is the case of the letters to Mariana, why?
Antonio Barroso Cruz: I think an author in some way reveals something of himself in his writing, even the simplest text as daily chronic, is a novel (which I do not know if some day I will get there). But is implicit in every story, every word, every picture he make during a travel, the soul of the author and the interpretation of his surroundings, or what he is seem it at the moment. "Lives and pieces of the world" is a dichotomy so to speak, on the one hand, the component of travel and other texts that have nothing to do with this book, but I decided to join it because after all are also part of our daily lives.

Some of the texts are eventually a travel because they speak of friendships you made around the world.
ABC: Inevitably are memories I collected, I compiled this book, because it started with the cover of the book, it appears the experience I lived in several countries that I was visiting. Letters to my daughter stem from a time when I was in Moscow. It is a beautiful city, but with very sad people, still under the Stalinist regime that ruled for a long time and from which has not yet managed to get rid of. Interestingly I was staying in a hotel directly overlooking the Red Square and then later in the day when the snow falls and the cold was so intense that people could not go out to the street, I decided to write these letters because I felt it was a way to be closer to her after so many thousand miles away from home.

The trip is not only the place, what's beyond that?
ABC: The trip is much more than the place, you know that throughout my privileged life, I can only consider it this way because in most cases I can do it for professional reasons, there are two phases. The first includes that eagerness to discover the world. I'd only went after things, places, the garden, or the monument, or the landscape, or a new horizon. Do not know if by influence of the age, or maturity as a traveler, I begin to notice more the people and all begin in a trip to Cape Verde. In fact, Cape Verdeans have touched me, especially on the island of Fogo in the Caldera Cha, that to whom I dedicate this "life and pieces of the world," I felt I had been wasting many years of my life with only places, not trying to get the soul, feeling and the people in Cape Verde was that turning point. I started to give priority to people.

What does Cape Verdean have that is so special?
ABC: The Cape Verdean people have a within sweetness, an openness. I had curious experiences in some of the islands I visited, the proximity to the people, the places where I lodged in were basic, but it led to that closeness. In particular the island of Fogo is one of the most isolated places you can imagine, it's amazing, I felt so touched by these people, and they are so tender, so in need of a hug and a friendly word that touched me deeply. Now when people ask me what sites of the world I most want to be? It is difficult to choose one, however, always say three: the island of Fogo in Cape Verde, Guatemala and Burma.

It’s a book with several male voices written by Ines Pedrosa.

What is this book so different? Because has the crudest kind of language, unabashed writing, uncompromising and fun description of the male vision of the feminine universe described by a woman. Does it make sense what I just said? A lot. Probably if intimates had been written by a man in his language would perhaps had a hint of complicity, of reciprocity on these experiences, these memories and revelations that cross between various male characters. That is not the case with Ines Pedrosa, she maintains that emotional distance, perhaps by the total ignorance of the functioning of the intricacies of the male mind and the lack of empathy that allows her to contemplate this reality with great curiosity and wit, as something that is made ​​known by the first time in centuries, then she is only the vehicle of this world so full of testosterone, which she does not judge and describes in such a powerful and ironical manner. It’s fun to read, considered this book  as a breath of fresh air in the culture of women's writing. Happy reading!

It is the biography of a woman far ahead of her time

Raquel Ochoa about this book told me once in an interview she granted me, though without revealing much that it is the story of the life of a Portuguese Joan of Arc. It is the absolute of truths. You know the saying, my life is a movie? The existence of Maria Adelaide de Braganza Van Uden is exactly that and more, because reality always surpasses fiction. The Infanta of Portugal lives up to her title for having shown a great nobility of character and courage, fruit of her personal and religious convictions, during one of the bloodiest periods of the twentieth century. I suggest reading this reading for two reasons, first because it is a fascinating story, well written and very rarely ... someone writes the biography of a Portuguese, a woman of our time, very little known of the general public, due to her discretion, yes, but it deserves to be perpetuated through a book that above all is a tribute to her dedication and commitment in helping others. The Portuguese are not avid readers of biographies; However, I leave this suggestion. Happy reading!

It's a delightful collection of Joseph Viola Moutinho.

Despite the book is part of a collection of youth as the author states on the back, these texts address to a wider audience, in good time. When I leaf through this small chest of the oral memories of my ancestors, it reminds me of some of the stories I was told by older relatives. One of my favorite was about pirates and involved a very smart saint called Peter, who wanted his chapel to be erected near the sea. It seems strange is not it? What have in common the first apostle of the Lord with evil villains? Incidentally, this book is filled with legends about stories with pirates that much more appreciated plundering the island's coastal towns, for that reason are included in our islander imaginary. Another story that has always fascinated me was the real origin of the name of the city of Machico and the discovery of Madera, there are two historical accounts that corroborate such cursed love, much to the taste of the Portuguese people, which led to a famous legend of the island. Nothing is more eternal than a love interrupted by a vile fate. That was very poetic even for me. As a young impressionable lady, it thrilled me to the tears the unfortunate story of Robert Machin and Anne of Arfet, they were hopelessly and madly enamored to the point of fleeing to get marry. And I say no more! You must read this book! Good reading.

It is one of the most emblematic works of Portuguese literature, from the author José Cardoso Pires.

It is a work that reflects the end of an era. The end of a family line, the Palma Bravos. Of a certain cloistered world in their beliefs and superstitions, a Gafeira, a broken reality, full of shadows and insidious mist. The book reflects a rural reality in abeyance. As the passage of time does not leave marks there are only hints of metamorphosis, purposely hidden by the main character, Thomas Palma Bravo, Hidalgo, a symbol of a decaying dynasty who tries to dominate everyone and everything. It all starts with one death, of his wife, Mary of Mercy. A tragedy involved in a certain mystery, attributed to the shadows that inhabit the lagoon. The action is described by a stranger, the narrator of this story that seeks to decipher the puzzle that involves the death of this noble woman and his self-enclosed universe. The writing of José Cardoso Pires cradles us, without stylistic gimmicks, nor fat, thru a period in the history of Portugal, although it is not clearly present, it is described subliminally. Find out and enjoy reading!