Take Six

Take Six is a celebration of six remarkable Portuguese women writers: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Maria Judite de Carvalho, Hélia Correia, Teolinda Gersão and Lídia Jorge. They are all past mistresses of the short story form, and their subject matter ranges from finding one's inner fox to a failed suicide attempt to a grandmother and grandson battling the wind on a beach. Stories and styles are all very different, but what the writers have in common is their ability to take everyday life and look at it afresh, so that even a trip on a ferry or an encounter with a stranger or a child's attempt to please her father become imbued with mystery and humour and sometimes tragedy. Relatively few women writers are translated into English, and this anthology is an attempt to rectify that imbalance and to introduce readers to some truly captivating tales from Portugal.

Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers. She won the Portuguese Translation Prize for The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa in 1992 and for The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersao in 2012, and her translations of Eca de Queiroz's novels The Relic (1996) and The City and the Mountains (2009) were shortlisted for the prize; with Javier Marias, she won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for A Heart So White, and, in 2000, she won the Weidenfeld Translation Prize for Jose Saramago's All the Names.In 2008 she won the Pen Book-of-the Month-Club Translation Prize and The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Maias by Eca de Queiroz.She has translated the following books for Dedalus: The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui and The River by Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, Lucio's Confession and The Great Shadow by Mario de Sa-Carneiro, The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy (with Annella McDermott), The Dedalus Book of Portuguese Fantasy (eds. Eugenio Lisboa and Helder Macedo), Spring and Summer Sonatas and Autumn and Winter Sonatas by Ramon del Valle-Inclan, and, by Eca de Queiroz: The Mandarin, The Relic, The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers, The Crime of Father Amaro, Cousin Bazilio, The Maias, The City and the Mountains, Alves & Co., The Mystery of the Sintra Road and The Illustrious House of Ramires.