culture

Minister of Culture presents Estoril Sol Literary Awards

In a solemn ceremony, scheduled for next Wednesday, November 23, starting at 6 pm, in the Estoril Casino Auditorium, the Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva, presents the Fernando Namora and Agustina Bessa-Luis Literary Prizes, instituted by Estoril Sol, and referring to 2021, respectively, to João Tordo and Catarina Gomes, as well as the Vasco Graça Moura Prize – Cultural Citizenship. attributed to editor Zeferino Coelho.

The Jury decided to award the Fernando Namora Literary Prize, with a pecuniary value of 15 thousand euros, to the writer João Tordo for the novel “Felicidade”.

In the minutes it was recorded that “Felicidade” “is a novel of emotional and affective formation of a man constituted as a narrator, although without a name that identifies him throughout the book. The dramatism of loneliness of the narrator and protagonist of the novel takes on great intensity and power of involvement in the reader. The mechanism is also situated in a precise but creative plan of realization. The names of the three female figures, Felicidade, Esperança and Angélica, project a symbolism that expands the imaginative process itself”.

In turn, regarding the Revelation Literary Prize Agustina Bessa-Luís, worth 10 thousand euros, the Jury distinguished the journalist Catarina Gomes with the original work “Terrinhas”.

In choosing “Terrinhas”, the jury considered it to be “a novel that, from the point of view of a typically urban woman, confronts the rural and urban worlds. The memory of the parents, who almost religiously go to the land to bring potatoes, which invade the kitchen and the narrator’s imagination, provides the ironic and sometimes even hilarious vision with which she evaluates her childhood and faces the pains and dramas of life. adulthood. The joy and moving tenderness in the assessment of life and death, associated with a fluid and elegant writing, give this novel an indisputable literary reach, which is important to value and disseminate”.

Finally, the Jury decided to award the Vasco Graça Moura – Cultural Citizenship Prize to the editor Zeferino Coelho, praising the “action developed, over more than fifty years, as an editor and active promoter of literature and culture in the Portuguese language in the world”.

The Jury minutes read that Zeferino Coelhobegan his work as an editor in 1969 at Editorial Inova, where he stayed until 1971, having joined Editorial Caminho in 1977. He was José Saramago’s editor, for the novel Levado do Chão and all the other books published, until his death, by the Nobel Prize for Portuguese Literature. He was also editor of eight winners of the Camões Prize, the most important in our language – in chronological order of their award: José Craveirinha, Saramago himself, Sophia de Mello Breyner, Luandino Vieira, Arménio Vieira, Mia Couto, Germano Almeida and Paulina Chiziane. By itself, this set of authors edited, among many others, by Zeferino Coelho, clearly demonstrates the importance of the award-winning cultural intervention, especially with regard to the national and international dissemination of Portuguese language literature”.

Chaired by Guilherme d`Oliveira Martins, the Estoril Sol Awards Jury was also made up of José Manuel Mendes, for the Portuguese Writers Association, Manuel Frias Martins, for the Portuguese Literary Critics Association, Maria Carlos Gil Loureiro, for the Directorate-General of the Book, Archives and Libraries, Ana Paula Laborinho, Liberto Cruz and José Carlos de Vasconcelos, individually invited, and also Dinis de Abreu, representing Estoril Sol.

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