“The emotion I feel for receiving, at this moment and in this city, this award cannot be explained”. Born in Boliqueime, Lídia Jorge received this Saturday, May 15th, the Grand Prize for Chronicle and Literary Dispersed Portuguese Association of Writers/Loulé Municipal Council, in a session that took place in the Loulé Municipal Assembly room.
The award distinguished the work “In Todos Sentidos”.
This book was born from the invitation launched to the author by Antena 2 director João Almeid to write chronicles, personal and not too connected to events, that could be read by herself on this public radio.
During 2019, weekly, Lídia Jorge gave voice to the texts, in an environment also created by the sound of Chet Baker's trumpet in “Almost Blue”. In 2020, the year in which “O Dia dos Prodígios” marked its 40th anniversary, the author preferred that “instead of a rich cover edition of this work, a new book with a poor cover should be done”. And that is how “Em Todos os Sentidos” appears, with these 41 radio chronicles transposed to paper, gathered in this award-winning work.
As explained by Carina Infante do Carmo, who, alongside José Carlos Seabra Pereira and José Moutinho, was part of the award jury, in this work Lídia Jorge «theorizes the form of the chronicle based on her experience as a storyteller».
Here we have «the precarious fragmentation of the chronicler's writing and the safe hand that writes and shrewdly leads the thought to an enlightened place».
Chronicle, a genre often considered minor for its brevity and hybridity, elements to which the author herself alludes in this work: «so the chronicle is not a genre, it is just a kind of homage to the god who makes the grains of sand, looking at us askance. As we cannot overcome Time, we write texts that challenge it, which we call chronicles».
A genre that, according to the winner, alongside short stories and poems, «are today the literary models that best fit into the flow of communication in our present and, therefore, the forms that are most easily popularized among readers».
There are several themes addressed in these pages, «the strength of Positivism at the beginning of this century, the limitless horizon of astrophysics, the overwhelming power of the digital universe, ecology, especially when misshapen, animalism when caricatured, the art of politics when defending the sacred selfishness of nations and nationalism that becomes a reductive vice».
Themes such as “tribalism, racism and the need for a new feminism” are also present.
And if it's the world, the places he traveled and the people he met who are here, his homeland and its people are also part of “In All Directions”.
«It is a book that has a lot of the area, that projects a lot of what the landscape is, the problems of the land itself, but above all my love for the land», stressed Lídia Jorge. The Algarve landscapes, the memories of some habits from the past, Loulé and the nightlife of its young people, «with their dreams and imaginary escapes» or characters like Maria Inácia, an unshakable defender of the Church of Boliqueime organ, transport the reader to the writer's roots.
Lídia Jorge is now part of the list of renowned writers who have already won the Grand Prize for Chronicle and Literary Dispersed Portuguese Association of Writers/Loulé City Council, including José Tolentino Mendonça, with “What are the clouds” in 2016, Rui Cardoso Martins, with “Leve the Defendant”, in 2017, Mário Cláudio, with “A Alma Vagueante”, in 2018, Pedro Mexia, with “Lá Fora”, in 2019, and Mário de Carvalho, with “ What I heard in the barrel of apples”, in 2020.
A prize that has grown and that, as the president of the Portuguese Association of Writers José Manuel Mendes stressed, «consolidated the prestige among all those who make up the archipelago of letters».
“From the first hour he was born, he has asserted himself as filling a key place. And since then, its importance has been proven at all levels. There are a greater number of chronicle books coming out, there are chronicle authors who see, from edition to edition, their books arriving in the hands of readers», he said.
An opinion shared by the partner in this project, the mayor Vítor Aleixo, who highlighted the fact that the prestige of the winners of this award has also contributed to raising the county's name.
The mayor also left words of thanks to the award winner for the role she has played in raising her land: «involved woman, with a clear and sharp thought about our times, a humanist, a free thinker, a person who inspires us to be better and makes us think and reflect on what we do, how we do it and what we do for it. For what it is and because with its literary action it has taken the name of Loulé to the world, being known and recognized for its writing, thus placing Loulé on the map of the cradle of the great world writers».
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