Literature
The earliest poems in the Portuguese language emerged from the troubadours of the old kingdom of Galicia, one of the Christian states fighting Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. The written language was refined in the Middle Ages by the chroniclers of the royal reigns. The first great Portuguese literature emerged in the 15th century, by playwright Gil Vicente, whose works range from moral tales with a maritime theme to bawdy comedies.
Born in 1524, Luís de Camões is the towering figure in Portuguese letters and considered one of the greats of world literature, up there with Shakespeare, Dante, and Cervantes. His epic poem Os Lusíadas is a heroic retelling of the voyages of discovery. A swashbuckling one-eyed veteran of Portugal’s overseas adventures, Camões is a national hero whose death is commemorated on June 10 as the national holiday.
Five Essential portuguese reads
Five of the best by Portuguese authors:
The Crime of Father Amaro by José Maria de Eça de Queirós: Written in 1875, this tale of forbidden passion between a young priest and an innocent girl in the provincial city of Leiria still has the power to shock.
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by José Saramago: This deeply atmospheric book set in dictatorship Lisbon during the 1930s evokes the mysterious world of poet Fernando Pessoa.
Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões: Portugal’s national epic was written in 1572 by the seafaring poet whose statue stares down on Lisbon’s Chiado district. Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, Camões tells a heroic tale of Portugal’s voyages of discovery through the eyes of Vasco da Gama, embellished by encounters with giants, seductive nymphs, and Greek gods.
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa: This posthumously published literary oddity has become a cult favorite. A meandering reflection on life and Lisbon, it is at turns funny and sad. It was chosen as one of the 100 greatest books ever in a survey of world authors.
The Return by Dulce Maria Cardoso: Set in 1975, this novel by one of Portugal’s best current writers tells of the trauma of the retornados, the up to one million Portuguese who fled Angola and other newly independent African nations at the end of Portugal’s colonial wars. It was a 2016 PEN Award winner for translated books.
The Portuguese novel came of age in the 19th century, and the greatest author of the age was José Maria de Eça de Queirós. A diplomat, his novels about Portuguese society blend biting satire with often dark tragedy dealing with controversial themes like incest, adultery, and clerical abuse. The Maias and The Crime of Father Amaro are his most powerful novels.
Poet Fernando Pessoa is a unique figure. Considered a founder of modernist literature, his writings are mystical and deeply philosophical, but struck a chord with his compatriots, who rate him second only to Camões among their literary greats. A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems gives a selection of his works translated into English.
Among modern writers, José Saramago stands out as the Portuguese language’s only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. A lifelong Communist who had a sometimes testy relationship with the authorities, he is widely revered. When he died in 2010, 20,000 attended his funeral. Saramago’s novels like The Elephant’s Journey and Baltasar and Blimunda delve into Portuguese history. Blindness and The Double are dark parables of modern life.
Successful contemporary works available in English include David Machado’s The Shelf Life of Happiness, a heartwarming tale set in the recession-hit 2000s; What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire? by veteran intellectual António Lobo Antunes; and In Your Hands, a saga covering the lives of three generations of Portuguese women by Inês Pedrosa.
Foreign Fiction Set in Portugal
Lisbon’s curious position in World War II as a neutral port filled with refugees and spies has inspired many novels. The best is The Night in Lisbon by the German anti-Nazi writer Erich Maria Remarque, who was himself a refugee. Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic is set in the same period and tells the story of a Serbian spy believed to be the real-life model for James Bond.
Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, a frequent Nobel Prize contender, had a long love affair with Portugal. His novel Pereira Declares is a story of intrigue set in 1930s Lisbon. Another classic with a Lisbon setting is Confessions of Felix Krull, about a visiting con artist by German Nobel-winner Thomas Mann, who unfortunately died before writing the ending.
Recent books include Alentejo Blue, a series of tales set in the rural south by award-winning British writer Monica Ali; The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, a best-seller by Richard Zimmer focusing on a Jewish family during the persecutions of the 16th century; and Like a Fading Shadow, a fictionalized account of James Earl Ray’s attempt to hide from American justice in Lisbon after the murder of Martin Luther King, written by Spanish novelist Antonio Muñoz Molina.
Food & Drink
The recent international discovery of Portugal’s healthy and delicious cuisine has triggered a sudden blooming of cookbooks and food guides. Manhattan-based culinary superstar George Mendes has penned a mouthwateringly beautiful tribute to the cooking of his homeland in My Portugal. His near namesake Nuno Mendes—a giant in London’s restaurant scene—has produced a recipe-packed homage to his hometown in My Lisbon. Food of Portugal by Jean Anderson is an excellent introduction for anybody wanting to cook up a taste of the country, while Maria de Lourdes Modesto’s encyclopedic Traditional Portuguese Cooking is a sacred text in many Portuguese kitchens.
Combining recipes with travelogue are Eat Portugal by Célia Pedroso and Lucy Pepper, and The Portuguese Travel Cookbook by food blogger Nelson Cavalheiro.
For the secrets of Portugal’s most complex tipples, try Richard Mayson’s Port and the Douro, and Madeira: The Mid-Atlantic Wine by Alex Liddell.
Music
Portugal’s most distinctive music is fado, the urban blues of Lisbon that comes close to encapsulating the nation’s soul. Fado traditionally involves a singer, male or female, accompanied by two guitarists, one playing the familiar classical guitar, called a viola in Portuguese, the other plucking the unique, tear-shaped guitarra Portuguesa. With 12 steel strings, the Portuguese guitar can, in the right hands, produce an amazing range of sound.
The word “fado” means “fate.” Although not all fado songs are melancholic, the music is deeply associated with saudade, an untranslatable word that implies longing for lost loves and distant homelands. It is a sentiment ingrained in the national character since the days when long sea voyages and successive waves of emigration carried the Portuguese to the far corners of the globe.
Fado has its roots in the bars and bordellos of Lisbon’s docklands and the tightly packed old neighborhoods of Alfama and Mouraria. Maria Severa, the earliest fado great, was a renowned lady of the night in early-19th-century Lisbon. The music’s disreputable origins are summed up in the painting O Fado by José Malhoa, on show in Lisbon’s Fado Museum.
Early in the 20th century, fado went mainstream. Although some maintained a bohemian edge, fado singers moved from backstreet bars to boulevard theaters, radio studios, and movie sets. Many casas de fado—fado houses—became chic restaurants. The Salazar dictatorship sought to sanitize fado, censoring lyrics and seeking to promote conservative values though the music.
Towering above all this was Amália Rodrigues, fado’s biggest name. From a poor background, she began singing as a teenager in the 1930s and became fado’s first global star. She sang lyrics penned by the nation’s greatest poets and popularized the song “April in Portugal,” later covered by the likes
