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Monsoon

Monsoon

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Author: Vimala Devi
Translated by: Paul Melo e Castro

9780857426956 | HB | pp. 176 | 2019 | Seagull Books

Through the stories in Monsoon, written with a mix of poignant nostalgia and sharp criticism, Vimala Devi recreates the colonial Goa of her childhood.

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An actor of traditional Hindu dramas meets an adolescent girl who turns out to be his half-sister. A man returns to Goa from Mozambique to father a child for a family whose unmarried daughters has produced no heirs. Another man feels out of place in his family home after returning from Portugal to get a university education, as a woman waits faithfully for him to return. A forbidden romance blooms between a Christian girl and a Hindu boy.

Through these stories, written with a mix of poignant nostalgia and sharp criticism, Vimala Devi recreates the colonial Goa of her childhood. First published in 1963, two years after the Portuguese colony became part of India, Monsoon is a cycle of twelve stories that vary in tone. By turns satirical, desolate, tender, humorous and dramatic, they come together through a subtle interplay of echoes, parallels and cross-references to form a composite picture of a world gone by. They delve into divisions of caste, religion, language and material privilege, setting them off against a common historical experience and deeply felt attachment to the land.

Translations of what might now consider Indian literature in Portuguese are few and far between. This rendition of Monsoon, which includes a critical and contextualizing introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes, allows contemporary readers a rare glimpse into a colonial society significantly different from the British Indian mainstream, filtered through a language and mindset that barely survives.

Author:

Vimala Devi
Translated by Paul Melo e Castro
Introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes
ISBN:

9780857426956
Binding:

Hardcover
Pages:

176
Year of Publication:

2019
Publisher:

Seagull Books
Edition:

First
Condition:

New
Country of Origin:

India

About the Contributors

Vimala Devi is the pen-name of Teresa da Piedade de Baptista Almeida. Born in 1932 in Portuguese Goa to a family of Catholic landowners, she pursued studies in Portuguese and English. In 1957 she moved to Lisbon and began to work as a translator. Along with Monsoon, she has published several collections of poetry, a memoir, and coauthored a two-volume critical essay and anthology, A Literatura Indo-Portuguesa. She currently lives in Barcelona.

Paul Melo e Castro is a British scholar and academic, known for his work on editing and translating particularly Indo-Portuguese literature. His area of work is Lusophone literature, film and visual culture. Dr. Castro has translated and edited two book-length works, Lengthening Shadows: An Anthology of Goan Short Stories translated from the Portuguese (Volume I and II). He is also the author of Shades of Grey: 1960s Lisbon in Novel, Film and Photography.

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