Gonçalo M Tavares – författare

A Voyage to India is the story of Bloom, our hero, as he makes his way from Lisbon to India in a decidedly non-heroic age. Gone are the galleons, gone is god; so too the swords of the swashbuckler and sacerdotal certainty. In such an era, where is wisdom to be found? Bloom-ever deliberate, ever longwinded-takes his time getting to India, stopping first in London, then Paris and elsewhere in Europe, making friends, encountering enemies, recounting his life story, revealing the reasons for his flight from Lisbon and his vague hopes for and nagging fears about what he might find in India. Or within himself. His is a melancholic itinerary, an attempt to learn and forget. As our narrator flatly declares: “Life proceeds and is monstrous.” Parodying The Lusiads, Luis de Camões’s sixteenth-century Portuguese epic of seafaring exploration and naval prowess, Tavares’s poem is a solemn requiem of sorts, an investigation into the psyche of humankind in a world where the advance of technology outpaces our ability (or desire) to theorize it, the search for wisdom has been abandoned, and old imperialist dreams have revealed themselves to be a postcolonial nightmare.

A Voyage to India is the story of Bloom, our hero, as he makes his way from Lisbon to India in a decidedly non-heroic age. Gone are the galleons, gone is god; so too the swords of the swashbuckler and sacerdotal certainty. In such an era, where is wisdom to be found? Bloom—ever deliberate, ever longwinded—takes his time getting to India, stopping first in London, then Paris and elsewhere in Europe, making friends, encountering enemies, recounting his life story, revealing the reasons for his flight from Lisbon and his vague hopes for and nagging fears about what he might find in India. Or within himself. His is a melancholic itinerary, an attempt to learn and forget. As our narrator flatly declares: “Life proceeds and is monstrous.” Parodying The Lusiads, Luis de Camões’s sixteenth-century Portuguese epic of seafaring exploration and naval prowess, Tavares’s poem is a solemn requiem of sorts, an investigation into the psyche of humankind in a world where the advance of technology outpaces our ability (or desire) to theorize it, the search for wisdom has been abandoned, and old imperialist dreams have revealed themselves to be a postcolonial nightmare.

Winner of the 2026 Formentor Prize for LiteratureAmid a landscape of rubble, skeletal figures, and helplessness in Europe post-World War II, a girl and a man wander among the ruins.Hanna, a 12-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome, is looking for her father. Marius, her companion, seems to be hiding from something. Aided by a simple instruction card, Hanna explores what it is to be human, as Tavares creates an abstract yet touching portrait of the true victims of war.

Con gran libertad formal, Tavares nos lleva a un viaje en el que primero seguimos a la joven Martha en sus andanzas por Berlín, luego presenciamosel transporte de una monumental estatua de Lenin desde Bucarest a Budapest, mientras un violinista repatria el cuerpo putrefacto de su madre en sentido inverso…Bucarest-Budapest nos expone sin tregua a la tensión de la elección y a la dificultad de traspasar las fronteras, sean cuales sean sus formas.

Hailed by Jose Saramago as the best writer of his generation and a likely future winner of the Nobel Prize, Dalkey Archive is proud to introduce Goncalo M. Tavares and his breakthrough novel.

The second installment in Tavares s acclaimed Kingdom series.