ADAM AND EVE IN PARADISE by José Maria de Eça de Queirós
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa
When Jose Saramago, Portugal’s lone Nobel Lit Laureate, enthusiastically cedes pole position in his country’s literary canon to another, you better believe I’ll be taking notice. All the more so when I’ve never heard of the man he names. Turns out Eça de Queirós lived quite the eventful life back in the late 19th century. Writer, diplomat, aspiring politician, cosmopolitan bon vivant, eventual nihilist… the guy knew how to live. And, if this little book is anything to go by, he was also unafraid to cause offence in the most bombastic fashion.
Adam and Eve in Paradise is a gloriously heretical sermon of sorts, retelling the biblical tale with satirical gusto and an aesthetic expansiveness verging on the decadent. In it we follow Adam, depicted here as the evolutionary missing link, as he learns to be human while making his way to Eden. Filled with lush, vibrant detail and historical absurdities - he meets dinosaurs, kangaroos and a very strange incarnation of Eve - the book also pokes fun at human frailty, evident from the outset.
I’m not sure that I’d put it before Blindness or The Stone Raft, but Adam and Eve in Paradise is a subversive feast.
Adam and Eve in Paradise by José Maria de Eça de Queirós (Tr. Margaret Jull Costa)
New Directions, 2025
60pp