Alentejo Blue

Table of Contents

About the Author

Monica Ali
is the author of one previous novel,
Brick Lane
, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in London.

Praise for
Alentejo Blue:

‘Ali gives us a glimpse into a world that’s truly exotic . . . brilliantly evocative’

Daily Express

‘This stunningly crafted fiction will knock you off your feet’

Oprah Magazine

‘[Ali] views the inhabitants of her Mamarrosa with a warm and sympathetic eye, everyone has a vivid life on the page. It is also part of Ali’s gift that she never allows the reader to come to easy conclusions. The village is no rural idyll – but neither is it bereft of pleasure or culture. The same compassionate respect for complexity governs her creation of character. As a novelist, Ali is not like her fictional novelist, Stanton, who pals around with the Potts family in order “to see the demons at work”’

Philip Marchand,
Toronto Star

‘Young, old, male, female, Portuguese, English, Ali’s portrayal of character is consistently convincing. The book has a wide emotional range; she does pathos, bitterness, joy, cynicism, tenderness, loss, regret. Our sympathies are constantly aroused, we are given tantalising glimpses into the inner worlds of these richly varied people’

Evening Standard

‘If you’re looking for an intelligent holiday read, this has it all’

Marie Claire

‘Ali sketches the horrors of the Salazar years with a light but telling touch . . . her writing is assured and all the more moving and disturbing for its restraint. Her new novel reveals the scope of her considerable talent’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘[Ali’s] assured writing and gentle humour are a constant delight’

Daily Mail

‘Her craftsmanship is superb and her descriptions rich with quirky, sad, funny and lovely details . . . The beauty of her writing gives her a starring role in this literary generation’

USA Today

‘Compelling, atmospheric and elegantly written’

Tatler

‘An excellent novel, so vivid in its descriptions of people and places . . .  A must read’

Diário de Notícias
(Portugal)

‘With its supple prose and acute insights . . .
Alentejo Blue
establishes definitively that Monica Ali is a major literary talent’

Entertainment Weekly

‘Ali’s latest rewards with characters who etch themselves into one’s memory’

People

‘The grace of Ali’s words is dazzling’

TimeOut New York

‘[Ali is] a writer with a keen eye for physical and emotional detail, and a style, mixing the tart with the lyrical which pulls you fast into her chosen world’

The Times

‘Ali is an expert with gesture; even minor characters appear in attitudes that are particular and unforgettable’

Nell Freudenberger,
The Nation

‘The “novel in short stories” is no new trick but Ali adapts it in a distinctive way, making it her own . . . These stories are absorbing and beautiful . . . legitimately gripping and lovely prose’

Baltimore Sun

‘Ali is masterful in writing about her characters’ lives’

Los Angeles Times

‘Beautifully written, a tour-de-force’

Bookpage

‘Ali evokes the village of Mamarrosa the way the American novelist Sherwood Anderson did the town of Winesburg, Ohio, in 1919 – with spare prose, through interior monologues built on a foundation of silence’

Philadelphia Inquirer

‘A master of concision and suggestion, [Ali] says volumes about characters and situations by what she does not say. It does indeed take a village – in this case, to show the fundamental universality

of all human predicaments’

Booklist

‘Using luminous, heartfelt language, the award-winning Ali weaves a tapestry of human frailty . . . the brief, tantalizing glimpses of private heartbreak each character reveals are both touching and compelling’

Library Journal

‘The voices are vivid and resonant, and there’s no question that it’s a more structurally ambitious, more nuanced, book than
Brick Lane
’

Chicago Tribune

‘
Alentejo Blue
is the work of an outrageously talented writer. Deft, funny, her understanding profound enough to be called wisdom . . . Ali gives us old and young, village-born and foreigner, each impeccably realized, with never a whisper of patronage’

The Australian

‘Ali writes like a dream. Every so often you stop in mid-sentenceto admire the prose . . . In
Alentejo Blue
you see why Ali is still considered one of the best writers working in English today’

Now
(Canada)

‘A bewitching read’

Scotland on Sunday

‘Ali weaves their stories together with sympathy and compassion, making this a very different, but no less worthy, successor to her formidable début’

Red

‘Once again, Ali’s characters are skilfully drawn, revealing hidden passions and disappointments that bring their stories alive’

Psychologies

For S.C.T.

Alentejo

The name of this southern province of Portugal is stressed on the third syllable –
A-len-TAY-jo
– and the ‘j’ is similar to the French ‘j’ in ‘jolie’.

‘Villages are like people, we approach them slowly, a step at a time.’

José Saramago,
Journey to Portugal

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

T. S. Eliot, ‘Ash-Wednesday’

Acknowledgements

This is neither a history book nor a travel book, but only a work of fiction. Readers who want to find out more about Portugal might like to turn to two books that combine history and travel to great effect: Paul Hyland’s
Backwards out of the Big World,
and
Oldest Ally: A Portrait of Salazar’s Portugal
by Peter Fryer and Patricia McGowan Pinheiro. There is not a great deal of literature available, in English, about the Alentejo. Robert and Mary Wilson’s excellent
A Short Trip in the Alentejo
focuses on the marble towns of the Alto (Upper) Alentejo, an area which has its own particular character, as does the imaginary corner of the Alentejo about which I have written.

I would like to thank Grant, Wendy, Max and Maya for introducing me to the pleasures of the Portuguese countryside, Liliana Chachian for her heroic attempts to teach me Portuguese, Nicole Aragi, Arabella Stein and Bill Scott-Kerr for all their support, and Deborah Adams for her scrupulous attention to detail. Most of all I would like to thank Simon for telling me to get on with it.

1

AT FIRST HE THOUGHT IT WAS A SCARECROW. COMING
outside in the tired morning light to relieve his bladder, blessing as always the old Judas tree, João turned his head and saw the dark shape in the woods. It took some time to zip his trousers. His fingers were like enemy agents. They pretended to be his instruments but secretly worked against him.

João walked out beneath the moss-skinned branches thinking only this: eighty-four years upon the earth is an eternity.

He touched Rui’s boots. They almost reached the ground. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘let me help you.’ He waited for the courage to look up and see his face. When it came he whispered in his lacerated old man’s voice. ‘
Querido
,’ he said, ‘
Ruizinho
.’

Standing on the log that Rui had kicked away, João took his penknife and began to cut the rope. He put his free arm across Rui’s chest and up beneath his armpit, felt the weight begin to shift as the fibres sprang apart beneath the blade.

The almond blossom was early this year. The tomatoes too would come early and turn a quick, deceiving red. They would not taste of anything. João took Rui’s crooked hand in his own and thought:
these are the things that I know
. It was time to put the broad beans in. The soil that had grown the corn needed to rest. The olives this year would be hard and small.

He sat in the long grass with his back against the log and Rui resting against him. He moved Rui’s head so it lay more comfortably on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around Rui’s body. For the second time he held him.