Small publishers and their great writers at the Book Fair

Publishers and bookstores such as Edições do Saguão, Frenesi, Letra Livre, Livros de Bordo, Maldoror, Tigre de Papel and other publishers with which they share pavilions, were responsible, in the last year, for the entry of hundreds of new titles into the Portuguese book market.

Their catalogues have revealed authors such as the British Olaf Stapledon, in the case of VS Editor, and the historic Japanese Saigyo, in the case of Flâneur; they have risked scientific dissemination, with 'Planeta Simbiótico', by Lynn Margulis, in Saguão, they have rescued works such as those by the geographer Orlando Ribeiro, once again available in Letra Livre, and they have brought titles by "great writers" that larger publishers do not always dare to publish.

Não (editions), which at the beginning of the month published 'This World Is a Verstep - Anthology of Ukrainian Poetry', is one of the examples, with its catalogue full of authors such as Edwin Morgan ('Last Message'), Gertrude Stein ('The Belly in the Air'), Patti Smith ('Coral Sea'), Paul Auster ('Blank Spaces') and the ever Nobel candidate Anne Carson ('Glass, Irony and God'), as well as Isadora Neves Marques ('Marx's Grave'), Rosa Oliveira ('I Dodge the Bullet...') and Tatiana Faia ('Adriano').

The Saguão Editions include books such as 'At An Uncertain Hour', poems by Italo Calvino, 'The Long Sandy Road', short stories by Pasolini, 'Exile Diary', by Yannis Ritsos, and 'An Inconceivable Chance', by Nobel Prize winner for Literature Wislawa Szymborska.

This publisher has brought together the work of Alberto Pimenta ('O Poeta e o Social', 'They'll Never be the Same', 'Ilhíada'), and published authors such as André Gorz (translated by Rui Caeiro), Antero de Quental, Cesare Pavese, Maria Filomena Molder, Silvina Rodrigues Lopes, Rui Pires Cabral ('Tense Drills').

Recent editions by Saguão include 'Ser Moderno... em Portugal', by Ernesto de Sousa, and 'Revoluciones -- Guiné-Bissau, Angola e Portugal (1969-1974)', by Italian photographer Uliano Lucas, who followed the struggle movements in Africa, before and after April 1974.

In this pavilion, you can also find publishers such as BCF, responsible for titles by Alexander Kluge ('Chronicle of Feelings'), Chantal Akerman ('A Family in Brussels'), Hervé Guibert ('The Phantom Image'), Marcel Schwob ('The Children's Crusade'); VS, with 'Letters from Prison', by Antonio Gramsci, 'Poetry', by Ernesto Sampaio; and Flâneur, with titles such as 'The Joyful Man', by Christian Bobin, 'Birds & Mushrooms', by Joana Gama and João Godinho, and 'One Flesh with the Night', translations and versions by Vasco Gato, in an edition with Língua Morta.

Livros de Bordo has in its catalogue authors such as Albert Londres ('In India') and Wenceslau de Moraes ('Glance of the Japanese Soul'). In its pavilion are titles from Antithesis, Bestiary, Radiant Cornuda, Museum of the Landscape, Snob, such as 'Alcohols', by Apollinaire, 'Museum of the Romance of Terna', by Macedonio Fernández (influenced by Jorge Luis Borges), 'Dialogues on the Culmination of Modern Times', by Jaime Semprun, 'Such Vastness', by Duarte Belo, and the anthology of 'Contemporary Portuguese Poetry', organized by Joaquim Manuel Magalhães.

The Little Books of Theatre by Artists United have been published with Snob. Among the most recent are 'Isma or what is Called Nothing', by Nathalie Sarraute, 'Four Hearts with Brakes and Reverse', by Enrique Jardiel Poncela, and 'The Bedbug', by Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Letra Livre and Maldoror, which share the Books of the Day calendar, have their own editions by authors such as Orlando Ribeiro ('The Formation of Portugal', 'Portugal, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic'), Emil Cioran ('The Temptation to Exist'), André Breton ('Manifestos of Surrealism'), Georges Bataille ('Theory of Religion'), João César Monteiro ('Written Work'), Franz Fanon ('The Wretched of the Earth'), Mário Pinto de Andrade ('Origins of African Nationalism 1911-1961') and António Jacinto ('Collected Works').

Maldoror's new releases include Lautréamont's 'Cantos de Maldoror', translated by Pedro Tamen and drawn by René Magritte, and Philippe Claudel's 'The Brodeck Report', 'a dark parable about war, xenophobia and memory', in a catalogue that includes Ezra Pound, Jean Genet and Constantin Cavafy, among many other authors.

At Letra Livre, you can find editions by Averno, such as the recent 'Súmula Poética', by António Barahona da Fonseca, and titles still available from the former &etc, founded by Vitor Silva Tavares.

Maldoror also has Língua Morta and Cutelo. The former, which has 'A Mulher do Meio', by Ivone Mendes da Silva, recently published 'O Prato do Diabo - Um Dicionário Pachecal', by Luiz Pacheco, organized by João Pedro George, 'O Equilíbrio', by Tonino Guerra, and 'O Futuro é o Mal', by Heiner Müller. Cutelo also has titles such as 'Knockemstiff', by Donald Ray Pollock, and 'Vestuário Contra as Mulheres', by Anne Boyer.

The anthology 'Freedom is not Granted, it is Conquered. Let the Blacks Conquer It!', with texts by Mário Domingues, was published by the newspaper A Batalha with Letra Livre and Falas Africanas.

Among the publications by A Batalha, in the Chili com Carne pavilion, are 'Cem Mil Anos para Ir à Escola', an anthology by the North-American poet Paul Goodman, in an edition with Barricada de Livros, and 'The Anticapitalist Armed Struggle in Catalonia in the Last Years of Francoism', an anthology by Salvador Puig Antich, assassinated by the Spanish dictatorship.

At the Tigre de Papel Bookstore, the company's own editions include titles such as 'Cambedo da Raia - Silenced Galician-Portuguese Solidarity', by various authors, in the context of the Spanish Civil War, 'Soft City', by David Sim, 'Tropical Fado', by Marcos Cardão, 'Pedrógão Grande. The Right to Architecture After the Fire', research by Marina Marmelada, and 'Inácia, the Trade Unionist Chicken', by Dora Santos Rosa and Felisbela Fonseca, for all ages.

At Tigre de Papel you can also find Casa da Achada, which reissues Mário Dionísio and published 'Seeing the Farthest Away Better Now', by Regina Guimarães; and Companhia das Ilhas, publisher of 'School of the Best. Light and Shadow in the Arts of the Image', by João Barrento, 'Pelléas and Mélisande', by Maeterlinck, in a translation by Pedro Eiras, and actors such as Gertrude Stein, TS Eliot and Vitorino Nemésio.

From Fora de Jogo, also represented here, are 'Oil in Angola. A colonial history (1881-1974)', by Franco Tomassoni, and 'Memoirs of a Garbage Hunter', by Celso Mussane, about life in suburban neighborhoods during the Portuguese presence in Mozambique.

'Lisbon and the Memory of the Empire', by Elsa Peralta, from the publisher Outro Modo, and productions from the Boca project, such as 'Stories of Freedom', by Miguel Torga, are also at Tigre de Papel.

Frenesi combines publishing with bookselling and second-hand bookselling activities. The showcase may include works of fiction by Nelson de Matos, former editor of Dom Quixote, who died on the 8th, rarities such as 'Lisbon and Those Who Live Here', short stories by Irene Lisboa published under the name João Falco by Seara Nova, and reissues such as 'O Calcanhar de Aquiles' by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro.

The catalogue also includes original poetry by Fátima Maldonado ('Chains of Transmission'), Helder Moura Pereira ('Amor Carnalis') and Paulo da Costa Domingos ('The Almost New Man'), essays by Raoul Vaneigem ('Basic Banalities'); it may reveal the writing of Asger Jorn, an artist from the Cobra movement ('The Wheel of Fortune') and rescue the classics of Baltazar Gracián y Morales and Ludovico Ariosto.

Alexandre Herculano, Camilo Castelo Branco, Fialho de Almeida, Gil Vicente, Manuel Laranjeira are other authors in Frenesi, which also published 'The Cornucopia Theater -- The Rules of the Game', by Carlos Alberto Machado.

Among the myriad of smaller publishers, the presence of bookstores and distributors at the book fair could also open doors to labels without 'official representation', through their stores.

Among the many cases, recent editions stand out, such as 'Serenely on Lanterns', the debut in Portugal by the North American Andrea Cohen, in a translation by Francisco José Craveiro, by the publisher on the left, 'Burning on Ice', by the Mozambican Mélio Tinga, published by A Morte do Artista, 'Mais Uma Desilusão', by Valério Romão, published by Abysmo, the text by the composer John Cage 'Where Are We Eating? What Are We Eating?', by Douda Correria, and 'Selected Poems 1959-2024', by the North American Neeli Cherkovsky, by Barco Bêbado.

The 95th edition of the Lisbon Book Fair ends next Sunday.