30^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Authors

Lídia Jorge

Portugal

Lídia Jorge, born in 1946, is the grande dame of Portuguese literature. Her work is shaped by her experiences of the late colonial era and the Carnation Revolution, which she reflects upon in multi-layered narratives, often from a female perspective. She has received every award available for Portuguese-language literature – and many more besides.
After a 20-year hiatus, two new German translations by Lídia Jorge are now available: In Erbarmen and Die Stunde der Nelken, Jorge’s poetics and the themes of her life are revealed in two distinct yet complementary forms: Erbarmen tells the story of an elderly woman in a care home, whose inner monologues lay bare a life caught between the loss of dignity and self-assertion.
With this major, empathetic late work, Jorge erects a monument to the generation of Portuguese people now over 90 years old: people who often had only two to four years of schooling, but who carried the Carnation Revolution and thus made the country’s relative prosperity of today possible. Die Stunde der Nelken looks directly at the upheaval of 1974 and unfolds a polyphonic panorama that unites utopia and reality, hope and disappointment, euphoria and disillusionment. Both books are linked by Jorge’s gift for making memory visible as a living, contradictory process.

Die Stunde der Nelken. Translated from Portuguese by Marianne Gareis. Secession 2026
Erbarmen. Translated from Portuguese by Steven Uhly. Secession 2025
Milene. Translated from Portuguese by Karin von Schweder-Schreiner. Suhrkamp 2005

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