Nélida Piñon

Grande Prêmio Nacional Pen Clube de Literatura de 2020 (Brazil)

A moving bildungsroman that raises an unforgettable handful of anonymous marginal characters to the level of kings and heroes.

Portugal, 19th century. Mateus, a young peasant, the son of a prostitute accused of witchcraft, is brought up by his grandfather Vicente, a man without studies but a lover of nature and the Portuguese language, who struggles to give his grandson an education.

When his grandfather dies, Mateus abandons the village with a small sack of food, the poems of Camoes in his head, and a moth-eaten bible. In the faithful company of a dog whom he calls after his hero, the famous Prince Henry the Navigator, Mateus sets out to reach Sagres in the extreme south of the country, where he hopes to find the freedom that is denied him by his social class. His adventure will lead him to discover love, the value of education and the extreme conditions the people of his country live in, those who are always forgotten in the history books.

"... una historia de búsqueda interior y de supervivencia escrita desde la atalaya de la senectud con una prosa majestuosa, impregnada una vez más de meridianas resonancias bíblicas y operísticas. [...] una crónica de la fallida conquista de la condición humana, una alabanza emocionada de la lengua portuguesa, el brillante soliloquio con el que concluye la obra entera de Piñon en forma de testamento literario..." Javier Aparicio, Babelia, El País