[A first review of Maria Aurora Couto's long awaited book Filomena's
Journeys by Selma Carvalho. The book is released this week in Bombay.]

"Chico was born into a patrician world of great privilege, the product of
Portuguese Republicanism which fostered intellectual pursuits among Goa’s
social elite but manacled them with colonial restraints. A world controlled
and dominated by an oligarchy of a few chosen Catholic families; the old
guard of the Velha Conquistas. Some of them might have been discreetly
impoverished, although their material impoverishment lay disguised within
the many folds of aristocratic frolic, and whatever revenue yielded from
the land. Behind the façade, lay the ennui of a society caught up in its
own conservatism, doing an inner battle with liberal minds who sought
release from its fetters. How could anyone channel their aspirations in a
land controlled by censure, both political and social? There were no great
revolutionary causes to defend or polemics to be challenged. There was only
the undue emphasis on proper comportment, on family honour, on duty and
obligation and the endless tyranny of everyday complacency which ultimately
led to a fracturing of the Self."
http://www.epaperoheraldo.in/Details.aspx?id=12251&boxid=459
43437&uid&dat=11%2F17%2F2013

Best wishes,
Selma



-- 


Augusto Pinto
40, Novo Portugal
Moira, Bardez
Goa, India
E pinto...@gmail.com
P 0832-2470336
M 9881126350

Reply via email to