Red

Mafalda Ivo Cruz’s work is made of books that are written as if she were painting, sculpting, or drawing the notes she needs to hear from an instrument. Literature that contains within it painting, vivid images that leap from the pages and throw themselves into our eyes. Narrative, however dissolved, that casts sounds (and silences) to wound inner ears, and that sometimes dances in a libertine wildness.

A common thread through all the works: an idea of family at the center. A poetic solution to a misunderstanding.

In "Vermelho", we have Tito, who lives in a Lisbon shantytown from which the sea can be glimpsed. We have Nina, the woman, pregnant, who paints the wall of the shack turquoise blue. And Lena, another woman, the missing vertex in an architecture structured around trios.

May 13, 2004 (Jornal Público): The announcement was made yesterday afternoon: "Vermelho", by Mafalda Ivo Cruz, 45 years old, is the winning work of the Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela 2003 of the Portuguese Association of Writers (APE), the largest and most prestigious distinction for literature in Portugal.It was not a unanimous choice - one of the jury members, Maria Isabel Barreno, voted for "Os Papéis de K", by Manuel António Pina (Assírio & Alvim). But Margarida Braga Neves, Eduardo Prado Coelho, José Carlos Seabra Pereira, Júlio Moreira and José Correia Tavares formed the majority that saw the writer’s fourth published work awarded, her most referential, crafted and dense narrative, perhaps the most difficult, but also one of the most brilliant - the moment of consummation of a deeply original and intense universe and voice. 

Mafalda Ivo Cruz is Portuguese, a writer, translator and essayist. Her work is distinguished by the search for an emotional truth. In Pequena Europa, she confirms herself as one of the most elegant and intense voices in contemporary Portuguese literature. She is the author of Um Requiem Português (1995), A Casa do Diabo (2000), O Rapaz de Botticelli (2002, Pen Club Fiction Award), Vermelho (2003, Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela da APE 2004), Emma (2004) and Oz (2006).