Tales from the Mountain

Rating:
Summary: A good work of fiction written with lyricism and humour.
Review: Far from embracing the cute multicultural stories of a elizabeth vasconcelos or a nino ricci, Torga writes about a remote area of Portugal, Tras os Montes with an unflinching, bitter view point. The lives of these people lead are hard and very rarely does he poeticize their hard labours. A rugged landscape which is difficult to grow anything, makes for a harsh people. However, Torga does imbue many stories with wonderful history and culture which transcend the mundane existence of his characters. Alma Grande is an especially beautiful and painful story of a cryptic community of Jews who hide their religion from the other community of Catholics. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read not only good fiction, but to anyone who would benefit by knowing some of the customs and attitudes of a people who leave in a remote area of a beautiful country.

Rating:
Summary: Universal regionalism
Review: Miguel Torga is the pseudonym of Adolfo Correia da Rocha, a Portuguese writer born in Trás-os-Montes, a remote, desolate, poor region of the country, a place from which many natives were to emigrate in search of a better future. Miguel Torga became known first through the transcendent beauty of his poems, but his literary work also includes diaries and short stories. The last is the case of "Tales from the Mountain," a collection of short stories focused on the way of life and the people of his native land. Miguel Torga remained throughout his life sentimentally rooted to this region, he created a myth of Trás-os-Montes, a lost paradise of his early childhood, a place he was forced to leave but whose prints remained forever embedded in his mind.

These short stories have a "universal regionalism" which becomes more poignant if the reader has been to "Trás-os-Montes." Narration is in the third person, and in a tragic tone the author laments for the life of those who have been left alone to face their relentless destiny.

Rating:
Summary: A simple monument in Portuguese literature
Review: The writing of Torga, in this book as in many others, is geographically confined to Tras-os-Montes, a rough and unyielding region of Portugal, if one of the two most awe inspiring ones (along with Alentejo); and it takes place during the times of the dictatorship in Portugal. However, the content of the tales is transcendent, both of time and space, as it delivers, with its situations and characters, an earthly portrayal of the human being, a rough sketch of the human condition, somewhat like the portraits of Rembrandt can also be regarded as an analysis of the human face.