Books & Authors

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is a Portuguese novelist. She was born in Luanda, Angola, in 1982, and grew up in Portugal. She is the author of the novels Esse Cabelo [That Hair],  Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso, As Telefones, A Visão das Plantas and Maremoto, among other books. That Hair was released in an English translation by Eric M. B. Becker in 2020. In this video, Djaimilia talks about one of her favourite words, pergunta, that means, question, ask, and why is it so important in her creative process.

“The End of Modern Exoneration”, is a book by Paulino Correia [heteronym of Al Ndjali and Fernando Kawendimba].

The work was written in three continents, Africa, America and Europe, factuating the Angolan contemporary daily life and has a preface by Professor and Doctor Mateus Cavala: “…in 20 stories, the writers work the fiction with the mastery that is peculiar to them. However, they manage to make us enter in their dreams, open us the door of their ‘I’ making us feel, for moments, living past and memory of a time that branches with the present and enlaces us in the hope of a future, with stars fixed in the sky of the night or of a sun that flames giving colour to ideas taken by the winds of destiny…”.

Paulino Correia is a writing duo from Lobito, Angola. It is formed by Al Ndjali and Fernando Kawendimba. The name, of their father, is used in honour of his memory, for having been their educator and for having always encouraged them to read.

“L Sbarrulho dun Anjo”, the translation into Mirandese of “A Queda dum Anjo”, by Camilo Castelo Branco, is published by Casa de Camilo, in São Miguel de Ceide, together with the Town Hall of Vila Nova de Famalicão, in order to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Camillian classic.
The idea of translating “A Queda de um Anjo” into Mirandese language was born during a conversation between Amadeu Ferreira – the great disseminator of the Mirandese language at the beginning of this century, the translator of “Os Lusíadas” and “Mensagem”, for instance – and the Director of Casa de Camilo in São Miguel de Ceide, Dr. José Manuel Oliveira.
There were several reasons for the relevance of the project, among which were: the forthcoming celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication and the fact that a substantial part of the action would take place in Caçarelhos, in the Land of Miranda, a territory where the Mirandese language is still spoken today. It would therefore have to be the mother tongue of, at least, Calisto Elói and Teodora de Figueiroa.
The illness and later death prevented Amadeu Ferreira from carrying out the project, to which I arrived by the hand of João Luís Sequeira Rodrigues, Director of the Espaço Miguel Torga, in São Martinho de Anta, who, knowing me and my work in the Mirandese language, recommended me to the Casa de Camilo.
For my part, I must confess that it was an honour and a great pleasure to be able to participate in the project, although even today I am not sure I have been up to the challenge. The difficulties of translating into Mirandese are the same as for translating into any other language, added to the lack of basic tools, such as dictionaries or grammars, or even the scarcity of previous literary translations. Perhaps it might be interesting to say that I often turned to the only existing repositories of the Mirandese language, the living dictionaries, the older people in my village, from whom I asked for directions and clarifications.
Another major difficulty: although it was once a language of court and power, the Mirandese language which has come down to us is the language of the shepherds of the mountains of León and the plateau of León, where the Planalto Mirandês has its roots. In the masterly characterization of Leite de Vasconcellos, when he presented it to the world, the Mirandese language is the language of home, work and love; however, the lexicon of these speakers is naturally not very broad, is confined to little varied circles and requires the use of numerous borrowings to reflect the tirades of Dr. Libório in the tribune of Lisbon, for instance.
This was a very significant step along the already century-old path of the Mirandese language and its affirmation as a “cultural” language, since it was the translation of a classic of Portuguese literature, belonging to the national canon.