The soap opera “O Diário de Antero Maleano”, by António Trabulo, won this year's edition of the Manuel Teixeira Gomes Literary Prize, which will be delivered this Thursday, December 12, in a ceremony included in the Official Celebrations of the City and Day scheduled for the Manuel Teixeira Gomes Municipal Library, from 21 pm.
The jury for the 2019 edition decided, by consensus, to award the Prize to this novel that follows the life of a solitary killer, who is waiting for the next commission: the one that will indicate a new victim, at the behest of an organization represented by such a Democritus.
In the city of Setúbal, Antero recalls a journey full of adventures in geographies as diverse as the Balkans, South America or the United States. This while revealing to us a day-to-day boredom and few contacts in the limited space of the neighborhood where he has an apartment and where he rarely leaves
According to the jury, “the diary record puts us in front of a simple, objective and very safe writing, almost always marked by the unexpected. Love, loneliness, trauma, hope, desire, friendship, indifference, all of this is in this diary created by António Trabulo. Perhaps the greatest surprise, when reading it, comes from the dry way in which the facts are presented to us, creating in the reader the feeling of lack of future, which is what seems to happen with Antero himself and with the characters that appear around him .»
António Trabulo was born in Almendra (Foz Coa) in 1943. He attended primary and secondary education in Sá da Bandeira (now Lubango), Angola. He studied in Coimbra and completed his military service on the hospital ship Gil Eannes. Retired physician, he was Head of the Neurosurgery Service at Hospital dos Capuchos, in Lisbon. He is president of the Portuguese Society of Medical Writers and Artists. He published novels, novels, short stories, biographies and essays.
The Manuel Teixeira Gomes Literary Prize is intended for all Portuguese authors, citizens of Portuguese-speaking countries, EU citizens and, also, other foreign citizens with a regular status of stay in Portugal.
In addition to being a fair tribute to the respective patron, whose life and work are closely linked to Portimão, the River Arade and the Algarve itself, it constitutes an initiative of special relevance in the context of national literature.
The winning work has an edition of 300 copies, and the author is also awarded a monetary prize in the amount of one thousand euros.
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