Gonçalo M. Tavares

José Saramago: «In thirty years, if not sooner, Tavares will win the Nobel Prize, and I am certain that my prediction will come true… Tavares has no right to write so well at 35 years old. It makes you want to punch him.» John M. Coetzee: «I greatly admire Gonçalo M. Tavares’s book Learning to Pray in the Age of Technology.» Olga Tokarczuk: «Gonçalo M. Tavares is a great writer who continues the finest models of the European literary tradition. He is both masterful and original. You recognize his unique perspective and style from the very first page of each of his novels. One of the very few writers in the world capable of constructing a parabolic story.» Annie Ernaux: «I read Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares. I reread it recently. I plan to read it again soon. It is a dizzying book that forces us to open our eyes, stunned, to humanity and never close them again. Reason and madness, Evil at the center of a narrative whose structure—erudite and perfectly readable—I admire, giving the impression of the end of the very idea of morality. Not only every conscience, but every body pursues the death of the other. The character of Mylia is the only free one. I also discovered the delightful little books of The Neighborhood, by Gonçalo M. Tavares, or how words disarrange reality, and the absurd becomes conceivable, drawn out.» Svetlana Alexievich: (Nobel Laureate, on The Neighborhood) «The history of humanity told to neighbors. In every house, a different philosophy. The history of humanity in a single neighborhood.» Jeanne Moreau: «I am in love with the Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares: a magnificent writer.» Javier Cercas: «Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares — for a multiple, transparent, incisive prose and an original reflection on human suffering.» Don DeLillo: «Joseph Walser's Machine, by Gonçalo M. Tavares, is a very strong book.» Irene Vallejo: «Gonçalo Tavares’s literature fascinates me through its brilliant paradoxes: he is an indomitable yet rational author, ironic and deep, singular and accessible, demanding of himself and at times irresistibly funny. His writing is a happy detonator for the reader's intelligence.» Alberto Manguel: «The greatest gift of the young Portuguese novelist Gonçalo M. Tavares is his capacity, as a writer, to reduce the world to fragments and rebuild it again as if it were his own creation. Each of his books (or set of books) is a kaleidoscope that rearranges reality so that we can observe it better, making connections explicit and rendering the superfluous obsolete.» The New Yorker: «Gonçalo M. Tavares is a writer unlike anyone we have read to date. He has the gift—like Flann O’Brien, Kafka, or Beckett—of showing how logic can effectively serve both madness and reason.» José Saramago: «There is a before and an after Gonçalo M. Tavares.» Enrique Vila-Matas: «A brilliant writer.» Agustín Fernández Mallo: «Perfection that is self-sufficient.» António Lobo Antunes: «Why must we frame things in terms of the Nobel?! Perhaps it would be better to ask: 'Can they be great writers or not?' (…) The most highly rated seems to me, without a doubt, Gonçalo M. Tavares. Without a doubt.» Mathias Énard: «Like Saramago, I feel like giving him a friendly pat on the back of the head.» Juan Gabriel Vásquez: «The Kingdom is the most incisive meditation I have read in a long time on the birth of fascism.» Alberto Manguel: «Portugal has authors who belong to world literature, like Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queirós, and, among the new generation, Gonçalo M. Tavares.» José Saramago: «Gonçalo M. Tavares burst onto the Portuguese literary scene armed with an absolutely original imagination that broke through all traditional imaginative boundaries. This, combined with a language entirely his own—blending bold invention and mastery of the colloquial—means it would be no exaggeration to say, without any disrespect to the young Portuguese novelists writing today, that there is very much a before Gonçalo M. Tavares and an after.» Alberto Manguel: «Tavares is one of the most ambitious writers of this century. His new book is a memorable epiphany.» Le Magazine Littéraire: «The brilliant Gonçalo M. Tavares.» Le Monde des Livres: «The author of a powerful and unique body of work, who has been celebrated by major figures such as José Saramago, Alberto Manguel, and Enrique Vila-Matas.» Magazine Littéraire: «Gonçalo M. Tavares is a true revelation.» The Independent: «Tavares has created something entirely original.» Enrique Vila-Matas: «Gonçalo M. Tavares is a genius.» José Mário Silva: «The great Portuguese writer of the 21st century. I am convinced that in a hundred years there will still be doctoral dissertations written on passages and fragments from A Voyage to India.» Vasco Graça Moura: «A great writer.» Mário de Carvalho: «He is a figure of enormous literary audacity.» Hélia Correia: «He is here to stay, in a space all his own.» Maria Velho da Costa: «Where does this dark, libertarian little soul come from, so free of malice? This talent so solitary within itself, no matter how many references it plays with? This warm-blooded coldness.» Pedro Mexia: «The French magazine Lire selected 50 writers for the new century. We can add one more. My vote: Gonçalo M. Tavares.» António Guerreiro: «Gonçalo M. Tavares is worth an entire literature.» Magazine Littéraire: «The brilliant Portuguese writer, Gonçalo M. Tavares, a major figure.» Le Figaro Magazine: «A Portuguese Kafka. Will Gonçalo M. Tavares become as widely exported as Port wine or saudade?» The Independent: «Tavares has created something compelling, darkly beautiful, inspired, and entirely original.»