Novel
Signs of Fire
Sinais de Fogo
Jorge de Sena · 1979
Synopsis
Summer 1936. Jorge, a young student from Lisbon, spends his holidays at an uncle's house in Figueira da Foz and meets up again with his group of friends. War has just broken out in Spain and the town is filling with Spaniards; the uncle is hiding two of them, wanted by the police, and some of the friends plan to steal a boat to get them across to the Republicans. Jorge falls in love with Mercedes, the sister of one of the conspirators, promised to a sailor, and discovers in a few weeks desire, politics and poetry.
Context
This novel was begun in Brazil, and its author worked on it until his last days: a fortnight before his death, he was still writing to his publisher that he hoped to finish revising it. The book appeared unfinished in 1979. It was meant to open a cycle entitled Monte Cativo, which would have run from 1936 to 1959 and remained at the stage of sketches and plans. It is the only novel by an author who regarded himself first of all as a poet. Luís Filipe Rocha made a film from it in 1995.
Who it is for
A long novel, translated into French, unfinished and lacking its author's revision: the narrator's long inner monologues often interrupt the action.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's masterpiece and as a milestone of Portuguese literature of the second half of the twentieth century.
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