[Heteronym]

You know, I wouldn't have believed you could fill a book with Portuguese fantasy fiction. Our writers have seldom ventured into fantasy, horror and detective fiction, preferring that annoying thing called realism, which is why I love José Saramago, who writes in the tradition of the best magical realists like Gabriel Gárcia Márquez and Italo Calvino, and with the same talent.

I'm happy to see Dedalus Books also has also translated a couple of books by Mário de Sá-Carneiro. In Portugal his fame rests on his poetry, but Dedalus has started with his prose, which I find sadly underappreciated.

Sá-Carneiro was one of the artists who inaugurated Modernism in Portugal, along with Fernando Pessoa, although he spent a good part of his life in Paris, where he shot himself to death at the age of 26. He left behind some really messed up novels and novellas, including the wonderful Lucio's Confession, the story of a man who leaves jail after serving ten years for a crime he claims he didn't commit (killing his best friend) and now decides to tell the whole truth about it, even if his testimony seems unbelievable. It's a strange novel, encapsulating Sá-Carneiro's pet themes: suicide, madness, fascination with the grotesque, alienation, art, identity. No wonder Dedalus put it in the Decadence imprint. For people who like Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Verlaine or Cioran, Sá-Carneiro is a must.