Book launch

02 Oct 2024

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José Gardeazabal's sixth novel, Origami, will be presented at KEF on 15 October at 7 pm by our director Mirna Queiroz. The conversation with the author will be moderated by literary critic, essayist and professor Teresa Carvalho. Excerpts from the book will be read in the author's own voice during the presentation.

In Origami (Companhia das Letras), “the reader is led along paths that diverge only to cross in a particular territory, belonging solely to the narrator and the reader. It is the story of a family and its emotional disconnects, in a plot that is also a social portrait in the manner of a chronicle of contemporary times”, as noted by literary critic José Riço Direitinho in the newspaper Público.

 

Read an excerpt from the book:

“When you die, you die everywhere. Soon
I would learn much more about dying.
Memory is important. Memory lies. There are good
memories, bad memories and so-so memories. I have no
good memories, so I appreciate the so-so ones.
The so-so memories also lie.
My father dropping me into the sea water, and me learning
to swim where my feet couldn't touch the bottom.
— Swim, kid, swim.
I sank up to my neck, first, and then I sank
deeper, while my father shouted.
— Swim, swim, swim!
I returned to the surface by my own means, by
my own hand. My father, motionless, smiled from a surprising altitude. I understood that day what unites me to my father: nothing.
Nothing is forever. Returning to the surface is like riding
a bike: you never forget.”

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José Gardeazabal was born in Lisbon in 1966. His first book of poetry, história do século vinte (2015), was distinguished with the INCM/Vasco Graça Moura Prize. He has published, with Companhia das Letras, the novels Meio homem metade baleia (2018, finalist for the Oceanos Prize), A melhor máquina viva (2020, first volume of the «Trilogia dos Pares»; finalist for the Fernando Namora, Correntes d’Escritas and Portuguese Society of Authors prizes; one of the books of the year for the newspapers Expresso and Público), Quarentena — Uma história de amor (2021, finalist for the Oceanos Prize), Quando éramos peixes (2022, second volume of the «Trilogia dos Pares»; finalist for the Correntes d’Escritas Prize), A mãe e o crocodilo (2023) and Origami (2024).

Teresa Carvalho holds a degree in Modern Languages and Literatures from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and a Master's in Poetics and Hermeneutics. A researcher at the Centre for Classical and Humanistic Studies at the same university, her research domains have focused on modern and contemporary Portuguese literature and literature in its relationship with the arts, with published works on Camões, Jorge de Sena and Vasco Graça Moura. She is the author of the essay books Epopeia e Anti-epopeia: de Virgílio a Alegre (Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2008) and Alface. Levantar as saias ao diabo (Maldoror, 2017). She collaborates with the Culture, Communication and Strategic Action Unit of the Portuguese Society of Authors. She is a member of the Portuguese Association of Writers and the Portuguese Association of Literary Critics. She is an instructor at the FEFAL Foundation. She is currently preparing her PhD thesis «Virgil, Camões and 20th Century Portuguese Fiction». Since 2016, she has been a literary critic for the newspaper i and the weekly Sol.

 

Information

Presentation of the book Origami, by José Gardeazabal
Publisher: Companhia das Letras
15 October 2024, at 7 pm
Rua de Santa Catarina 9, Lisbon