So Many People, Mariana

“A definitive collection of stories by a Portuguese master of the form…united by their quiet intensity, their commitment to internal turmoil, and their enduring interest in the lives, hopes, and miseries that are unique to women.” —*Kirkus Reviews* (starred review) “A **tour de force of domestic horrors, placidly delivered with sharp observation.…There are surprises and twists that demonstrate a command of form, irony, and humor, but no happy or satisfying endings. What emerges from these narratives is work that feels inherently political, a kaleidoscopic look at a society languishing under repression.” *—Full Stop* Maria Judite de Carvalho (1921-1998) is now recognized as a major Portuguese writer of the twentieth century. In the short story she found the perfect vessel for her frank depictions of tragic, ordinary lives, and *So Many People, Mariana* collects her first four books of short fiction in English for the first time, telling of women and men in moments of existential conflict: with their families; with themselves; with the prospect of a better future—or any future at all. These stories, originally published between 1959 and 1967, when the Salazar dictatorship and the rigid edicts of the Catholic church reigned, are acerbic, artful, and funny. Translated by the renowned Margaret Jull Costa, Carvalho leads readers into the sensuous dark of life under patriarchal capitalism, proffering tragic visions of class-conscious malaise “as precisely and without sentiment as an autopsy” (*New York Review of Books*).