Lídia Jorge’s novel “Misericórdia” has won the Prize for Best Lusophone Book published in France, awarded by the editorial board of the literary magazine Transfuge, the Dom Quixote publishing house, which publishes the author’s work, announced today.
“Published by Métailié, Lídia Jorge’s publisher in that country, and translated by Elisabeth Monteiro Rodrigues, ‘Misericórdia’ has been very well received by the critics, who have already included it among the main highlights of the French rentrée,” he added.
Published in Portugal in October 2022, the novel “Misericórdia” was written by Lídia Jorge at the request of her mother, who, hospitalized in an institution for the elderly in the Algarve, repeatedly asked her to write a book with that title.
The story takes place between April 2019 and April 2020, the date of the death of the author’s mother, who was one of the first victims of covid-19 in the south of the country.
“My mother asked me several times to write a book called ‘Mercy’, because she thought there was a misunderstanding in the way people were treated, she thought people were trying to be loved, but they didn’t understand. She asked me to write a book called ‘Mercy’, so that we could have compassion for people and treat them as if they were people in the fullness of life,” the author revealed in an interview with Lusa at the time of the novel’s publication.
According to the writer, this is not a “morbid” book and writing it did not give her feelings of sadness or pain. Rather, it is a “book about the splendor of life that happens when people are about to leave”, about the “magnificent acts of resistance that people have at the end of their lives”.
“Misericórdia” won the Grand Prize for Novel and Novella 2022 from the Portuguese Writers’ Association (APE).
Lídia Jorge made her debut with the publication of “O Dia dos Prodígios” in 1980. Since then she has published novels, short stories, essays, theater, chronicles and poetry. Her stories have been adapted for the theater, television and cinema.
His books include “A Costa dos Murmúrios”, “O Vale da Paixão”, “O Vento Assobiando nas Gruas”, “Os Memoráveis” and “Estuário”.
Widely translated and published abroad, Lídia Jorge has been honored several times, namely with the Correntes d’Escritas Prize in 2004, the Albatros Prize from the Günter Grass Foundation in 2006 and the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages at the Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico in 2020.
