Some months ago I was delighted to receive a review copy of The Moon Come to Earth: Dispatches from Lisbon. Now, as an astrologer with a rather obvious passion for Portugal there perhaps could not be a more suitable book for me!

The summer disappeared in a haze of studying and an insane days filled with hours of over-time, squeezing in my Portuguese studies where I could. I have had little time to take in my own surrounding let alone travel. I miss Lisbon like a desperate child lost in a giant supermarket. I want to go home but I can’t! I feel like stamping my feet but I must wait, be sensible, and focus on developing a career that means I can work from anywhere to the march of my own drum. But Lisbon calls to me through the pictures on my walls, through the voice of a special Portuguese someone, through Madredeus and Fado, through the gorgeous David Fonseca and endless poetry. And more recently still my two selves have begun to merge in discovering Pessoa was a highly skilled astrologer himself…

But I digress. The Moon Come to Earth was born from a series of Dispatches from Lisbon which Philip Graham first published on the internet. A published writer and a university lecturer, Philip has a yearning for Portugal which I recognise as a kindred spirit. Having spent years living in Africa, he is a seasoned traveller with a keen eye for detail.

I can honestly say I was hooked from the first page. The author brings Lisbon and Portugal to life in his pages. I was suddenly roaming the mosaic streets with him, transported to my soul-home in a mere glance from the author’s eye. I was there on Rossio, walking in the leafy shade in Principe Real. I laughed at his hilarious descriptions of difficult moments and was touched by his openess as he lets us in to see the world through his sometimes fallible eyes. We learn what it is really like to be a stranger in a strange land that curiously feels like home.

I loved the description of  his brave fight to learn Portuguese as his daughter effortlessly absorbs it as a youngster does: his love – hate relationship with the swallowing of vowels and the sea like oosh…oosh..of spoken European Portuguese.

“It’s actually this confounded swallowing that creates the wave of sound I love, the words melting their discrete borders into a collective enterprise that rises amd falls together, like the houses dotting the hills of Lisbon’.

Philip paints a vivid picture of Portugal and the Portuguese culture from one who truly respects it. He describes the quiet passion of the Portuguese people, their love of festivals and football and the huge pride in national writers. We are treated to lines from Pessoa and Saramago (with whom he recounts a slightly icy meeting) and gently guided through a history of the Portugal and its flourishing from Cape Verde to politics, through fado to the quiet revolution. Whilst the book is quite short, there is a wealth of material to start your own Portuguese odyssey.

I don’t want to give anything away but suffice is to say that towards the end of the book there is a denouement that I never saw coming and which savagely pulled at my heartstrings. Because woven within the pages, within the swallowed vowels and billions of calçada stones, in the lines between Saramago and Pessoa, hanging in the scent of galão and pasteis; there is a very human story. This is not just an embellished travel journey, this is a story of one family and their fierce and delicate love for each other. Philip is not shy to admit his struggles as well as his victories. He is a writer with a keenly perceptive eye for detail and he is not afraid to turn that eye upon himself, to see himself in black and white and every shade of grey as we humans are. I’m not afraid to say the book moved me to tears as well as laughter.

I’ve often felt that you cannot learn the word ’saudade’ without eventually coming to live the true meaning of it. It’s as though it is not a word to be simply spoken, it must be lived through all it’s bewitching sorrow and aching hope. It’s as though the word has a spirit of its own that comes to greet you as you whisper ’saudade’.

It whispers back  “Dance with me a while and you shall know me”.

I know I danced and so it seems, did Philip Graham and his family.

Philip Graham’s Website

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I’m currently reading The Surprise of Being which is a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa. I wasn’t sure what to expect and I am ashamed to say it’s been a good few years since I settled down to read some poetry. During my degree years, my favourite writers were the romantics: Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake. I like poetry that makes me think and which has an edge of darkness to it.

This collection of Pessoa’s work seems to me to paint a picture of someone who spend much of his life questioning who he was and what others thought him to be. There is certainly the element of the ’suffering poet’ etched within his words. That said, I cannot possibly think of him as ‘miserable’ because there are such flashes of inspiration and delicate beauty. There is sadness and perhaps a hint of saudade. Reading Pessoa is like walking into another’s dream and seeing the landscape they built with their thoughts, only to watch it shift into a place you almost recognise. It’s like deju-vu on a rainy day and curiously recognising a stranger.

Here is my favourite poem so far.

O que me dói não é
O que há no coração
Mas essas coisas lindas
Que nunca existirão…

São as formas sem forma
Que passam sem que a dor
As possa conhecer
Ou as sonhar o amor.

São como se a tristeza
Fosse árvore e uma a uma,
Caíssem suas folhas
Entre o vestígio e a bruma

What hurts me is not
What is in the heart
But those beautiful things
Which will never be.

They are the forms without form
That go by without pain
Being able to know
Or love to dream them

They are as if sadness
Were a tree and one by one,
Its leaves were falling
Between the trace and the mist. 

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Their current issue features writing from the Portuguese world spanning Portugal, Africa and Brazil. You’ll find excerpts of books, poetry and interviews. I love the poem by Manoel De Barros and I am listening to a mix by DJ Spooky who is also featured on the site.  There is also a delightful piece by Teolinda Gersão called “The Woman Who Stole the Rain” which is beautifully written.

Take a look – Words Without Borders

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Read the full article -Source The New York Times

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Written by an Italian author, this novel is a dreamlike journey through Lisbon. Written as a tribute to the Portuguese poet Fenando Pessoa, this beautiful short novel centres on the quest of the narrator to meet the ghosts of the past whilst giving the reader a fascinating and surreal taste of Lisbon.

A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson

This thriller follows centres on the unfolding of two stories – the investigation into the murder of a young girl in Lisbon and the tale of Klaus Felsen, a Nazi officer sent to Lisbon to gain supplies to support the war effort. The two stories seem seperate at first but over time begin to weave together in a fascinating, brutal unrelenting plot that earned it the prestigious Gold Dagger Award for the best mystery written in 1999.

The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler

Essentially a murder mystery story that takes place in 1506, this seething drama is set against a backdrop of Christian against Jew. As Christianity sweeps Portugal, the Jews continue to practice their faith in secret whilst atrocities occur all around them. The narrator of the novel is Berekiah Zarco, a young manuscript illuminator. After finding his uncle murdered he embarks on a journey to reveal the murderer. Said to be factually based, this novel is powerful, gruesome and utterly absorbing.

The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon by Henry Fielding

In real life Henry Fielding sailed to Portugal in an attempt to search for a cure for his rapidly deterioting health. Sadly he died in Lisbon two months after his arrival. This novel is his personal narrative of his last journey.

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Saramago

Considered to be one of Saramego’s greatest novels and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis follows the title characters torment on his return to Lisbon after living in Brazil. Ricardo Reis was one of the pseudonyms used by the great Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. In this novel, Ricardo Reis meets the ghost of Pessoa and is taken on a philosophcal journey exploring the idea of life and death. Much of the time the reader is given little indication of what is real and what is fantasy along the way but the novel becomes all the more intriguing and compelling  because of this.

The Lisbon Crossing by Tom Gabbay

Forced to leave Hollywood with a hit man trailing him after an affair with a directors wife, Jack Teller makes his way to Lisbon on the arm of fallen German filmstar Lili Sterne. Lili is trying to trace her friend Eva but detective Eddie Grimes winds up dead on her trail. Teller suddenly finds himself caught up in a dangerous world of political intrigue in the early years of World War Two. A novel packed full of suspense.

Escape to Lisbon by Bill Coulton

After a harsh brush with cancer, elderly Lily Fuller decides to head for Lisbon on a journey of personal exploration. She asks old friend Hank to accompany her and he in turn is joined by his son and daughter-in-law. This is a gentle novel that follows Lily’s new appreciation of life in the face of death.

An Explanation of the Birds by Antonion Lobo Antunes

Rui S. is a political historian with a history of a failure. He failed in school, failed in politics and failed in marriage. Now in the later years of his life and witnessing the breakdown of his second marriage Rui is also breaking down mentally. He realises he must change his life somehow and decides to take his wife on holiday to Lisbon. Sadly Rui once again seems destined to be the loser of the tale.

The Dream Merchant of Lisbon by Gene Coyle

Based on the true life experiences of the author, this novel weaves the tale of CIA officer Shawn Reilly who in his later years has found himself in living in Lisbon working for a boss he doesn’t like and watching his marriage disintegrate. As a spy for the United States he is targetted by the Russian Intelligence Service. The suspense gathers pace as he begins a forbidden affair with a beautiful Russian woman.

The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom

The hero of the novel is Herman Musset, a quiet man living in Amsterdam who teaches Classics and spends most of his life reading. It seems he has lived an unremarkable life until one morning Herman wakes up to find himelf in Lisbon twenty years earlier in a room where he once made love to a married woman. This bizarre but touching novel will keep you guessing right up to the end. It is gloriously poetic and insighteful and full of literary references. Nooteboom has that rare ability to show wit whilst at the same time tugging on your heart-strings

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