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2025 Longlist

Eliete – A Normal Life

Translated from the Portuguese
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ABOUT
THE BOOK

Eliete is stuck in both a dead-end job, and a dead-end marriage. She’s never had many grand dreams or ambitions, but now she is starting to wonder if life might have passed her by. So, Eliete decides to join Tinder. She sets up some fake dating profiles, and embarks on a number of liaisons with various men around suburban Lisbon. Will this ignite her marriage with the spark it so desperately needs? And then Eliete’s grandmother is diagnosed with dementia, and moves in with them. Alarmingly, her illness seems to have resurfaced some scandalous personal memories, and her unguarded outbursts threaten to reveal explosive, long-buried family secrets.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Dulce
Maria Cardoso

Dulce Maria Cardoso is a Portuguese writer, who spent her childhood in Luanda, Angola after her parents moved there when she was an infant. Her family returned to Portugal following the Angolan War of Independence in 1975. She studied law at the University of Lisbon and worked as a lawyer before becoming a full-time writer. Her first novel, Campo de Sangue, won the Grand Prize Acontece de Romance, Violeta among the Stars won the EU Prize for Literature and O Chão dos Pardais won the Portuguese Pen Club Award.

Dulce Maria Cardoso is a Portuguese writer, who spent her childhood in Luanda, Angola after her parents moved there when she was an infant. Her family returned to Portugal following the Angolan War of Independence in 1975. She studied law at the University of Lisbon and worked as a lawyer before becoming a full-time writer. Her first novel, Campo de Sangue, won the Grand Prize Acontece de Romance, Violeta among the Stars won the EU Prize for Literature and O Chão dos Pardais won the Portuguese Pen Club Award.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Ángel
Gurría-Quintana

Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the books pages of the Financial Times. His translations include Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil (Full Circle Editions, 2013) and The Return, Violeta Among the Stars and Eliete by Dulce Maria Cardoso (all MacLehose Press).

Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the books pages of the Financial Times. His translations include Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil (Full Circle Editions, 2013) and The Return, Violeta Among the Stars and Eliete by Dulce Maria Cardoso (all MacLehose Press).

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The book tells the story of family life, of so many dedicated wives and mothers, who gradually begin to suffocate. Born in 1975, she always wanted a normal life, which she appears to have achieved when she reaches 42 years of age. But his perception of his own existence changes with the news that his grandmother has been hospitalized. This particular event triggers an investigation into his life: his childhood, marked by the unexpected death of his father; the relationship he establishes with his mother, his grandmother and the memory of his father who fought against the Salazar dictatorship. Little by little, concerns grow within Eliete, consuming not only her past, but also her relationship with her husband (with whom she shares the roof but who she hears more about on social media) and with her daughters (of whom she feels each increasingly distant). In order to escape this turbulent scenario, she then decides to take refuge on Tinder, where she pretends to be someone else, and the meetings that arise transform this woman’s life and the way she sees herself. With skillfully constructed prose, Dulce Maria Cardoso precisely handles language and history in this unsettling and sensitive novel.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
06/06/2024
Country
Portugal
Original Language
Portuguese
Publisher
MacLehose Press
Translator
Ángel Gurría-Quintana
Translation
Translated from the Portuguese
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