Lisbon in Manhattan
Product Description
Author: Jose Rodrigues Migueis
Edited by Onesimo T. Almeida, 1984. ISBN 0-943722-10-1
In 1978, Jose Rodrigues Migueis, one of the great Portuguese writers of the twentieth century, died in Manhattan after having lived the last forty-three years of his life in the heart of New York City. Born in Lisbon in 1901, he lived, while there, an active political life as writer-intellectual helping to consolidate the republic established after the overthrow of the monarchy. With the failure of the young regime, however, and the country's falling into the hands of a dictatorship that would last until 1974 (almost to the end of his life) he elected to go into exile in the United States, where he would dedicate his energies to writing fiction, much of which recreates the fevered Lisbon years of his youth. Publishing only in his native language (though now his work has been translated into several others), he lived a dichotomized life with his physical being in New York and his mind in his native Portugal.
The publication of this collection of essays is a step towards releasing the work of this prisoner in the castle of his native language to the wider world in which, in near-anonymity, he lived half of his life.
Onesimo T. Almeida is Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at BrownUniversityand has numerous publications on a wide range of subjects.
In 1978, Jose Rodrigues Migueis, one of the great Portuguese writers of the twentieth century, died in Manhattan after having lived the last forty-three years of his life in the heart of New York City. Born in Lisbon in 1901, he lived, while there, an active political life as writer-intellectual helping to consolidate the republic established after the overthrow of the monarchy. With the failure of the young regime, however, and the country's falling into the hands of a dictatorship that would last until 1974 (almost to the end of his life) he elected to go into exile in the United States, where he would dedicate his energies to writing fiction, much of which recreates the fevered Lisbon years of his youth. Publishing only in his native language (though now his work has been translated into several others), he lived a dichotomized life with his physical being in New York and his mind in his native Portugal.
The publication of this collection of essays is a step towards releasing the work of this prisoner in the castle of his native language to the wider world in which, in near-anonymity, he lived half of his life.
Onesimo T. Almeida is Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at BrownUniversityand has numerous publications on a wide range of subjects.
