Description

“If anyone might be profitably compared to Clarice Lispector, it might well be Maria Gabriela Llansol. This is because of the fundamentally mystical impulse that animates them both, their conception of writing as a sacred act, a prayer: their idea that it was through writing that a person can reach ‘the core of being.'” – Benjamin Moser, author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

“Llansol’s text . . . creates spaces where conjecture and counterfactual accounts operate freely granting a glimpse of an alternative reality.” Claire Williams, The Guardian

Geography of Rebels presents the English debut of three linked novellas from influential Portuguese writer Maria Gabriela Llansol. With echoes of Clarice Lispector, Llansol’s novellas evoke her vision of writing as life, conjuring historical figures and weaving together history, poetry, and philosophy in a transcendent journey through one of Portugal’s greatest creative minds.

Maria Gabriela Llansol (1931-2008) is one of the preeminent Portuguese writers of the 20th century, twice awarded the prize for best novel from the Portuguese Writers’ Association.

Publisher Review

"Her idiosyncratic, highly creative texts reached beyond conventional "figurative" writing. . . . In particular, her narrators function almost as a medium, or channel, for a series of fluctuating identities and voices or visitors (figures) who inhabit her consciousness and engage in discussion among themselves. Llansol's text also creates spaces where conjecture and counterfactual accounts operate freely - granting a glimpse of an alternative reality. She created iconoclastic, anti-nationalist texts that deflated mythical figures and representations of the past. She stressed Europe's evolution through the growth of free will, free thought and flourishing artistic and scientific developments." - Claire Williams, The Guardian "Intense and sublime." - Jose Manuel Barroso, former president of the European Commission