![]() Quote of the Day
If it were not for Carcanet, my library would be unbearably impoverished.
Louis de Bernieres
|
|
Book Search
Subscribe to our mailing list
|
|
Tales and More Tales from the MountainMiguel TorgaTranslated by Ivana Carlsen![]()
Categories: Portuguese, Translation
Imprint: Aspects of Portugal Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (232 pages) (Pub. Sep 1996) 9781857542028 Out of Stock
`His poems move in service of the loved landscapes of England and France; they sing (and growl) in love of argument, in love of seeing throuugh, in love of the firm descriptions of moral self-disgust; they move in love of the old lost life by which the new life is condemned.'
Donald Hall, New York Times Book Review
Miguel Torga's celebrated Tales (Contos and Novos Contos de Montanha) are set in the remote and barren Tras-os-Montos-'over the mountains'-region of north-east Portugal. There the writer was born into a family of illiterate country people. He speaks with first-hand knowledge of the men and women living there - complex in emotion and thought, elusive and thrifty with words, direct in action, forced by circumstance to deal with matters of love and hate, life and death, without the comfortable illusions and material expectations that protect most people, even the urban poor.
These tautly constructed tales, brief and telling, exactly observed, touch and haunt the reader in the ways that myth and epic do. Torga's disconcerting view of rural life led to the banning of the Tales when they were first published. Later editions were published in Brazil, smuggled into Portugal and passed from hand to hand in literary and student circles. Torga was imprisoned for his unremitting opposition to the Salazar regime. He has since risen to an unrivalled position in modern Portuguese literature, with fifty published works to his credit, including poetry, fiction, plays, journals, essays, and a celebrated autobiography. He has received numerous international awards, twice been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and his work has been translated into most languages. Yet hardly at all, until now, into English. This is the first complete edition of the Tales to appear in translation here as one of the first three books in Carcanet's new series From the Portuguese. |
Share this...
Quick Links
Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years!
Anvil Press Poetry
Aspects of Portugal
Carcanet Classics
Carcanet Fiction
Carcanet Film
Carcanet Poetry
Fyfield Books
Lintott Press
Little Island Press
Lives and Letters
OxfordPoets
PN Review
Sheep Meadow Press
The Carcanet Blog
The Feeling Sonnets: Eugene Ostashevsky
read more
PN Review 266: Editorial
read more
Ian Pople: Spillway: New and Selected Poems
read more
Peter Sansom: Lanyard
read more
PN Review 265: Under the Cover with Gregory O'Brien
read more
PN Review 265: Editorial
read more
![]() |
![]() We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
|
|
This website ©2000-2022 Carcanet Press Ltd
|