Why a Booktrail?
1420s-2000s: The rise and fall of a great maritime empire
Distant Music
What you need to know before your trail
The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperança and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow…
The story culminates in London in 2000, but not before the four tales introduce us how the two lovers are forced together and then apart via social and religious divides.
Esperança is a Portuguese Catholic, Emmanuel a Jew, The two lovers go on a journey of self discovery against a backdrop of Portugal’s great maritime empire. An elderly Esperança even encounters Christopher Columbus
Travel Guide
We found this an interesting read since it spans four periods of history that we at least knew little if nothing about. From the cover and even the description on the back it may not look like a meaty novel of sorts but the way in which the persecution of the Jews throughout the ages is dealt with and developed is fascinating and horrifically disturbing in equal measure.
The characters are rich and diverse – Esperança is an illiterate peasant, and there’s a bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. Madeira is described in evocative detail, rich in time and history –
“On a Genoese Medici map , it is clearly marked: Isolad della Lolagname – the Island of Wood “
Early seafarers see it rather differerently – as a portent of doom and kept away from this place where the sea boiled against the cliffs and the mist covered it in mystery and intrigue.
There is a particular chapter on 1492 which revealed that year for the shambles that it was in so many ways as Portugal seemed intent on ridding itself of those who could do the most good.
Similarly the section on the Lisbon earthquake places you at the heart of the action and it is a memorable experience to have been there and to have felt the rumbles of change for yourself. Esperança an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. Esperanca will later meet Christopher Columbus as he prepares to discover the New World and this is just one of her journeys in one incarnation!
The booktrail focuses on the sights and history in Portugal.
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