by José Cardoso Pires

Born in São João do Peso, in central Portugal on February 2, 1925, José Cardoso Pires moved to Lisbon with his family while he was still a child. He completed his secondary education there and went on to study mathematics at the Faculdade de Ciências (1943- 45). During this period, Cardoso Pires became a member of a leftist-leaning party, the Movement of Democratic Unity, and after its extinction he joined the Portuguese Communist Party, which he abandoned in 1974, two days after the Portuguese Revolution, in order to experience the country in its bourgeois freedom. However, he remained a staunch defender of Marxist ideology until his death on October 26, 1998. A half century earlier, during the 1940s, Cardoso Pires published his first short story as well as many essays in literary magazines and Os Caminheiros e Outros Contos...