The Girl from the Sea & Other Stories

by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator), Robin Patterson (Translator)

Overview

The author is one of Portugal's greatest poets and, like her poetry, these stories are filled with her delight and pleasure in nature, gardens and the sea, as well as her keen sense of the magical. Among other things, we encounter dwarves, diminutive little girls who live on the sea bed, plants that come alive at night, a tree that lives on long after it has been felled, and a pilgrim who discovers much more than the Holy Land. Her themes are, above all, loyalty and friendship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912868032
Publisher:	Dedalus, Limited
Publication date:	04/01/2020
Series:	Young Dedalus , #3
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (1919-2004) was brought up in a wealthy Catholic family, although she was also always fiercely critical of the repressive right-wing Salazar regime. Introduced by her nanny to the joys of poetry and story-telling, she published several collections of poems, 2 volumes of short stories and 9 children's stories, which she wrote originally for her own children. She became Portugal's most acclaimed poet and was the first woman to be awarded Portugal's highest literary honour, the Premio Camões.

Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers. She won many awards including the Marsh Children's Fiction in Translation Award for The Adventures of Shola by Bernardo AtxagaI. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, awarded an OBE for services to literature, the Ordem Infante D. Henrique by the Portuguese government.and a lifetime achievement award by the Cervantes Institute in New York.

Robin Patterson is a translator from Portuguese and Spanish.His translations include Our Musseque by Jose Luandino Vieira for Dedalus. He has translated several books with Margaret Jull Costa, one of which Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lúcio Cardoso won The Best Translated Book Award in the USA in 2017.

Editorial Reviews

2020-08-25
A collection of short stories for children by a beloved Portuguese author.

A boy finds a green-haired, purple-eyed little girl by the sea and strikes up a new friendship that will change his life forever when they seek to fulfill their dreams. The Fairy Oriana discovers the importance of her life’s mission through a journey of self-awareness. A young girl learns the true meaning of Christmas after she befriends a poor boy. A Danish knight travels the world and back again in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Garden flowers throw an unforgettable secret party. Eleven-years-old Isabel meets a dwarf with a golden treasure and a centuries-old mission. An enormous, ancient tree is the centerpiece of life in a small Japanese island. A girl from a village in Japan inherits a magical mirror from her late mother. The author is one of Portugal’s greatest modern poets, and this first English translation of eight of her short stories abounds with allegories about nature, friendship, community, and ethics, all firmly rooted in the author’s Catholic faith and interwoven with fantastical elements. Two of the stories (“The Tree” and “The Mirror, or the Living Portrait”) are loose adaptations of Japanese folktales while the other six are standard European-style fables with strong didactic cores.

Will appeal to readers who appreciate tales with an old-fashioned flavor. (Short stories. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews