"This is a book about the passions, their profound psychology, and sometimes, often, their ontology. It's made up of probes launched into the depths of the soul's liquid movements to tentatively illuminate, to varying degrees, realities whose form has no precise contours. At the same time, it is also something else. It is a reflection on the manner of writing and a lesson on the author's particular understanding of what literature is." From the Foreword by Paulo Tunhas

Agustina Bessa-Luís was born in Vila Meã, Amarante, on October 15, 1922. Her childhood and adolescence were spent in this region, whose ambience will strongly mark the writer's work. She made her debut as a novelist in 1948, with the novel Mundo Fechado (Closed World), and since then she has maintained an unusual rate of publication in Portuguese literature, with more than half a hundred works.

She has represented Portuguese literature at numerous colloquiums and international meetings and has given lectures at universities all over the world.