Novel
Doomed Love
Amor de Perdição
Camilo Castelo Branco · 1862
Synopsis
In Viseu, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, two families hate each other. Simão Botelho, the son of a magistrate and a violent young man, falls in love with his neighbour Teresa de Albuquerque, whom he sees from his window, and becomes for her a diligent student at Coimbra. Teresa's father wants to marry her to his cousin; she refuses, and she is shut away in a convent. The two young people write to each other in secret, helped by Mariana da Cruz, who loves Simão without hope.
Context
The book was written in a fortnight, in 1861, in the Relação prison in Porto, where its author was awaiting trial; it appeared in 1862. In it the author took up the story of his paternal uncle, Simão Botelho, which his aunt had told him as a child and whose entry he found in the registers of that same prison. The book bears the subtitle Mémoires d'une famille. In 1864 he wrote Amor de Salvação, conceived in part as its counterpoint.
Who it is for
A short novel, in brief chapters, which weaves the lovers' letters into the narrative; an annotated edition helps with the context of the period.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the major work of its author; adapted for the cinema by António Lopes Ribeiro (1943), Manoel de Oliveira (1978) and Mário Barroso (2008).
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