Twenty steps

Eleven short stories. Some of them, as the author explains in a note, contain recognisable references.

 “Seroda” is another story by Mariana Cruz, from Amor de Perdição, and “Captura” is “another perspective on Clarice Lispector’s “A Imitação da Rosa”.”

“Uma Noite em Luddenden” evokes Branwell Brontë. “Hélder e Djalme” are names taken from real people. “A Dama Singular” is dedicated to a woman who has had a major influence on Portuguese literature.

It would be good if the Camões Prize, which she was awarded in 2015, helped to draw attention to the work of Hélia Correia, an author who shuns the spotlight and one of the leading voices in contemporary Portuguese literature.

Hélia Correia (1949) is a contemporary Portuguese writer. She holds a degree in Romance Philology and is a secondary school Portuguese teacher. Despite her love of poetry, she is recognised as a fiction writer and one of the leading figures of the 1980s generation of Portuguese short-story writers, although her short stories, novellas and novels are always imbued with poetic language.