Lídia Jorge

Jorge was born in the village of Boliqueime in the Algarve region of southern Portugal into a family of farmers and emigrants. She graduated in Romance Philology from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon and became a secondary school teacher. In this position, she spent some decisive years in Angola and Mozambique, during the last period of the Portuguese Colonial War, but most of her teaching career was in Portugal. She was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon between 1995 and 1999. She also served as a member of the Portuguese High Authority for Social Communication, the country's media regulator, and was a member of the General Council of the University of Algarve.

Jorge's first publication, the novel O Dia dos Prodígios [The Day of the Prodigies] (1980), is considered to be a major contribution to the new wave of modern Portuguese literature which followed the end of the Estado Novo regime in 1974. The two novels which followed, O Cais das Merendas [The Wharf of the Parties' Remains] (1982) and Notícia da Cidade Silvestre [The Wild Town Remembering] (1984) both won the City of Lisbon Literary Prize.

It was, however, with A Costa dos Murmúrios [The Murmuring Coast] (1988), a book that draws upon her experiences in colonial Africa, that the author confirmed her status as one of the leading figures in modern Portuguese literature.

In 1998, O Vale da Paixão [The Painter of Birds] won a number of awards. Four years later the novel O Vento Assobiando nas Gruas [The Wind Whistling in the Cranes] (2002)^[2] won the Grand Prize for Novel and Novella of the Portuguese Writers' Association and the Prémio Correntes d'Escritas (Prize for New Currents in Writing).

In 2007, Jorge published the novel Combateremos a Sombra [We Shall Fight the Shadow], which was launched at the Fernando Pessoa Foundation in Lisbon. This novel won the Michel Brisset Prize 2008 awarded by the French Psychiatrists Association.

In 2009, the author published the essay Contrato Sentimental [Sentimental Contract], a critical reflection on the future of Portugal. In 2011 she wrote A Noite das Mulheres Cantoras [The Night of the Singing Women].

Os Memoráveis, published in 2014, is a book about the mythology of the Carnation Revolution, recovering the theme of O Dia dos Prodígios, her first book. In 2018, she published Estuário,^[3] about the vulnerability of the present time.

Jorge has also written for the younger audience: O Grande Voo do Pardal [The Great Flight of the Sparrow] (2007) illustrated by Inês de Oliveira, and Romance do Grande Gatão [Big Tomcat's Novel] (2010) illustrated by Danuta Wojciechowska.

Although she had written poetry from an early age, it was only in 2019 that she published her first book of poems, O Livro das Tréguas. Lídia Jorge has published anthologies of short stories, Marido e Outros Contos [Husband and Other Stories] (1997), O Belo Adormecido [The Sleeping Beau] (2003), Praça de Londres [London Plaza] (2008), O Amor em Lobito Bay [Love in Lobito Bay] (2016) in addition to separate editions of A Instrumentalina (1992) and O Conto do Nadador [The Story of the Swimmer] (1992).

In 2020, under the title Em Todos os Sentidos,^[4] she gathered the chronicles she had read over the course of a year on Portuguese public radio, Antena 2.

In 2022, the writer published Misericórdia, a reflection on humanity and a tribute to her mother, Maria dos Remédios, who died during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[5] With this novel, Lídia Jorge has won several prizes, including the Prix Médicis étranger.

• the colonial and dictatorial past
• the meaning of revolutions
• tensions between modern and postmodern society
• conflicts between generations
• family breakups
• the female condition
• emigration

The literary agency that represents Lídia Jorge, Literarische Agentur Dr. Ray-Güde Mertin (named after the literature professor and literary agent of that name), is based in Frankfurt and is now directed by Nicole Witt.

Lídia Jorge's novels are translated into several languages. Her works, in addition to editions in Brazil, have been translated into more than twenty languages, namely English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Italian and Greek, and are the object of study in Portuguese and foreign universities. Several essays have also been dedicated to them.

The University of Algarve, on 15 December 2010, awarded her a Doctorate Honoris Causa.^[9] In 2020, issue 205 of COLÓQUIO LETRAS Magazine was dedicated to her. In 2021, number 136 of the Spanish Magazine TURIA also dedicated its main dossier to the novelist. In September of that year, the University of Geneva, in Switzerland, inaugurated the Lídia Jorge Chair and in November,^[10] at the University of Massachusetts UMass Amherst, the protocol for a Lídia Jorge Chair was signed. This Chair was inaugurated in April 2022.^[11] In March 2024 another Lídia Jorge Chair was inaugurated, this time at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil.^[12]

The University of Aveiro, on the occasion of its 51st anniversary, on December 18, 2024, awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa to Lídia Jorge, describing the Algarve author as "probably the most international of contemporary Portuguese writers, whose books travel the world, translated into the most diverse languages".

On 17 December 2004, the Municipal Council of Albufeira inaugurated the Lídia Jorge Municipal Library in her honour.^[13] To mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of O Dia dos Prodígios, the Municipality of Loulé promoted a large bio-bibliographic exhibition, "Thirty Years of Published Writing", between November 2010 and March 2011 at the Convento de Santo António dos Olivais.^[14]

In Portugal, the then President of the Republic, Jorge Sampaio, awarded her the Grand Cross of the Order of Infante D. Henrique on 9 March 2005.^[15] The President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac, on 13 April 2005, decorated her as a Chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Letters, being later elevated to the rank of Officer, on July 14, 2015.

In 2021, Lídia Jorge was appointed member of the Portuguese Council of State by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa for the period 2021–2026.^[16]

She is a regular contributor to Jornal de Letras and has written chronicles for Público^[17] and El País.^[18]