Dulce Maria Cardoso

The novel is an account of the youngest woman’s ordinary life against the background of a three-generation Portuguese family story in the 20th and 21st centuries. Aware that her husband’s and daughters’ addiction to social media disrupts family relationships, Eliete signs up for a dating site. She longs to give new meaning to her monotonous life as a middle-aged woman suffering from feeling lonely and desperate about her grandmother’s developing dementia. Starting with the stories of two emancipated women – Eliete and her friend Milena – the novel also delves into the long period of gender inequality and discrimination in Salazar’s Portugal. The dictator’s specter, still present in Portugal in the 21st century, unexpectedly reappears also in Eliete’s life…

Published by Bourdon, 2021

Dulce Maria Cardoso (* 1964) is one of the most important Portuguese writers. She spent her childhood in Angola, from where she returned to Portugal in 1975, shortly after the Carnation Revolution and Angola’s independence. She worked as a lawyer while writing novels and film scripts. The author also published two collections of short stories and a collection of feuilletons. Literary work is, as she writes, “as much a machete as a protective shield.“