Summary
Dejan Tiago-Stanković: Where I was from, I'm not anymore
You tell one, two, three, then the tenth story and that number begins to grow by itself and the stories merge, permeate, somehow become one and you see that they are no longer just stories. There is Lisbon, your protagonist, sunny, beautiful, rich in people and events, nestled under the blue of the sky that is like that only above it. There is a narrator who came from this area to another, Western world and looks at it with eyes born here, opened there. There are numerous characters, some ancient, some very modern, and all special, shaped, alive on the pages of the novel as if you were sitting somewhere on a Lisbon corner and chatting. And you realize that in front of you is a novel about a city and its inhabitants that goes on and on, you read it, you smile, then it overwhelms you, you think for a while, and the smile spreads across your face again. You enjoy it.
Tiago, master of the pen, crowned with the European Union Prize for Literature, after Estoril, a summer resort with a turbulent history, and Cairo's hot Zamalek embraced by the waters of the Nile, does not falter in his geography of human souls along the axis of time and space from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. From where I was, I'm no more from the title to the last sentence conveys the extraordinary atmosphere of a special city created by its inhabitants, whether they were born in it or arrived there, and the narrator has done his best to make your spirit richer and your heart happier when you close the pages of this exceptional book.
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