Editorial Reviews
Review
“José Luís Peixoto is one of the most surprising revelations in recent Portuguese literature.”
- José Saramago
“Brilliantly rendered episodic tales of rural loss...Peixoto's evocation of pathos is tempered by a keen sense of the absurd. His ironic sensibility shines through beautifully in this translation.”
- Financial Times
“Peixoto’s bold, incantatory prose is consistently beautiful… simple but also incredibly rich and resonant. ….The external narrator’s own wise words are picked up and repeated by the characters, as though these portentous lines, these profound thoughts are out there… like great discovered truths. That even these weighty lines are moving and thought-provoking, rather than pretentious, is further testament to the author’s considerable skills.”
- The Independent (UK)
“[The Implacable Order of Things] poses difficult questions and challenges the reader… but the patient reader finds great rewards.”
– The Australian
“You read and breathe as if you were downing a bottle of life in one gulp.”
– Le Figaro
“‘Peixoto comes from the world of poetry and of the theatre. And this can be sensed here. His pages, purified in the lyrical prose that makes them unique, introduce us to a rural space burned by the sun, inhabited by the singing of the cicadas and suspended in a mythical time where each action has a biblical inevitability.”
– Vogue Italia
Product Description
Set in an unnamed Portuguese village against a background of severe rural poverty, THE IMPLACABLE ORDER OF THINGS is told from the various points of view of two generations of men and women, hardened by hunger and toil and driven by a fate beyond them to fulfill their roles in the never-ending cycle of retribution and death. José, a quiet sheepherder, sees his happiness crumble when the “Devil” tells him he is being cuckolded. Old Gabriel offers wise counsel while a different kind of love story develops: Moisés and Elias, twins attached at the tips of their little fingers and unable to live without each other, find their tender communion shattered when Moisés falls in love with the local cook. And, of course, there is the Devil himself. Love may be a luxury, but there are moments of the greatest tenderness among even the most unlikely lovers.
Written with subtle prose and powerful imagery, THE IMPLACABLE ORDER OF THINGS is a novel of haunting beauty, and introduces American readers to the astounding, poetic voice of José Luís Peixoto.
