My Death: And Other Visions from a Fading Century (Paperback or Softback)

The timeless classic Portuguese author Teixeira de Queiroz (pseud. Bento Moreno) is now available in English for the very first time. This first ever translation of the author's work by Philipe Pharo is a showcase anthology of short stories that unveils a long-overlooked literary gem, offering readers an insight at the rich tradition of Portuguese Literature and Culture.

My Death, the first story in this book, is most certainly an example of the existentialism wave, where a man looks into his illness and convalescence while trying to discern whether he fell to hell or raised to heaven.

The second story, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is a small travelogue which makes use of some religious irony, paving the way to a mysterious encounter.

As for the third story, The Blind Man from Guardiam, being the longest and perhaps one of the author's best-known short stories, it talks about a common figure with much importance in Northern Portugal, the fiddler. The musician travels from village to village, and cities, where people always have great expectations about his presence in local festivities, in time he becomes incredibly famous and much appreciated, until one day his mastery is put to the test.

Finally, A King's Oldness, is a story which might be considered a reflexion the same as My Death, with a different narrative point of view, and with a more materialistic approach to human mind and will, questioning the aristocratic hypocrisy and the true relevance of richness to one's life.

In summary we can say that Teixeira de Queiroz had a very sharped interest in society, in its contradictions but also in its most ordinary culture, and these stories most surely prove it.

The Editor: Filipe Faro da Costa

Born Francisco Joaquim Teixeira de Queiroz (pseud. Bento Moreno), in Arcos de Valdevez, Minho, Portugal, on the 3rd of May 1848, and deceased on the 22nd of July 1919 in Sintra, Extremadura, Portugal. Teixeira de Queiroz was a Portuguese writer, medical doctor, and politician, who produced a vast and significant literary heritage throughout the late XIX century and the beginnings of the XX century. Eminent figure in the turn of century, Teixeira de Queiroz is among one of the sometimes-forgotten authors of Portuguese Literature. His path as a social intervenient goes way beyond his literary works, as he was a medical doctor and an elected politician in times of political change. He was alderman in the Lisbon City Council (1885) and a deputy at the National Assembly in the 1893 legislature, before the Republican Portuguese Revolution and the 5th October 1910 Proclamation of the Portuguese Republic, afterwards he became a republican deputy to the National Constituent Assembly in 1911, elected by the Aldeia Galega (now Montijo) constituency, but soon renounced, years later he became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first government presided by José de Castro in 1915. That same year he became president of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. His literary work was mainly composed of two different series, Comédia do Campo (Country Comedy) and Comédia Burguesa (Bourgeois Comedy), through which he wrote about the sensitivities of the Northern-Portuguese people and the landscapes of the Northern regions countryside, in particular Minho and its culture, but also about other parts, namely urban, of the small but historic southern European nation of Portugal.