Portuguese & Lusophone-World Lecture Series

Join Dr. Elizabeth Lowe, Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, as she discusses why João de Melo and Antônio Lobo Antunes are important authors to read and translate, despite their being "difficult" writers. While both have an intimate connection with the literary history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they are under-appreciated.

Their mostly dark novels focus on wars unfamiliar to most English speakers, forced migration, human suffering, and geographies that many have not traveled. Their style is intricate, the characters suffer, and the plots are difficult to follow. Yet both have been backed by major U.S. publishers and received a wealth of critical praise. As a close reader of both authors (the translator is the closest reader of a text!), Elizabeth will address the pleasure and pain of translating these masters of contemporary Portuguese and world letters.

Purchase a copy of Happy People in Tears HERE. 

Dr. Elizabeth Lowe is currently in residence as the Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Development Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at UMass Dartmouth’s Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture. She is a professor at New York University, in the Master's Program in Translation and Interpreting. Elizabeth translates Lusophone fiction into English and is currently working on three novels by Antônio Lobo Antunes for Dalkey Archive Press. Three of her translations, including João de Melo's Happy People in Tears, were published by Tagus Press. She is the author of The City in Brazilian Literature (1982) and Translation and the Rise of Inter-American Literature (2008).