Saudade

Shortlisted, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards

A coming-of-age story set in Angola in the period leading up to the colony’s independence, Saudade focuses on a Goan immigrant family caught between complicity in Portuguese rule, and their dependence on the Angolans who are their servants. The title speaks to the melancholy longing for homeland that haunts the characters, and especially the young girl who is the book’s protagonist and narrator.

Suneeta Peres da Costa’s novella captures with intense lyricism the difficult relationship between the girl and her mother, and the ways in which their intimate world is shaken by domestic violence, the legacies of slavery and the end of empire. Her intellectual awakening unfolds into a growing awareness of the lies of colonialism, and the violent political ruptures that ultimately lead to her father’s death, and their exile.

Peres da Costa weaves sadness and longing through the pages of this piercingly beautiful novella… the author combines scenes, dialogue, and narration in continuous and exhilarating prose.
Sujatha Fernandes, Sydney Review of Books

Saudade will leave you feeling lost and homesick for a place of your own. Peres Da Costa paints a vivid picture of a young girl’s internal world and shows us how precarious, damaging and lonely an othered existence can be. Saudade is a beautifully written, enlightening read.
Marisa Wikramanayake, Books+Publishing

A treasure of a novella, a vivid throaty shout in which settings and sounds and the physical world work tangibly together.
Michalia Arathimos, Overland

A lyrical, bold evocation of childhood, enlivened by unforced flourishes of magical realism, that plays intricately on layers of awareness and awakening, on the notion of homecoming, and on complicity in injustice.
Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald

Saudade…is a contradictory emotion, one that is bittersweet, of having but not holding, holding yet not having. As such, it is the perfect title for a work that makes a fascinating contribution to any body of writing with which one might like to associate it: Australian, Indian, Goan, Angolan… A strongly recommended read.
Paul Melo e Castro, Interdisciplinary Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies

Peres da Costa…is alive to the palimpsestic writing over of colonial sites and their histories… Saudade can be read as an alternative route towards understanding the untranslatable sadness of a lost empire.
Anna MacDonald, Splice