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A year after being chosen to deliver the speech on Portugal Day, Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge, one of the country’s leading contemporary literary figures, has received the highest distinction awarded to authors writing in Portuguese, the Camões Prize. Jorge thus succeeds the Angolan poet Ana Paula Tavares, who received the prize last year.
Born in Tavira in 1946, Lídia Jorge is the author of more than a dozen titles, mainly novels, beginning in 1979 with the publication of O Dia dos Prodígios.
Her most recent novel, Misericórdia, published in 2022, is largely autofiction, based on her experience with her mother, who fell victim to the Covid-19 pandemic while in a care home. Misericórdia has received several awards in Portugal and also won the prestigious Prix Médicis Étranger in France. Earlier this year, the author received the Austrian State Prize for European Literature for her life’s work.
The Camões Prize is jointly awarded by Portugal and Brazil, and is organised by Portugal’s Ministry of Culture and Brazil’s National Library Foundation.