Lisbon, Sept. 9, 2025 (Lusa) - The writer Teolinda Gersão is the winner of the APE - DGLAB Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas, with her novel "Martha Freud's Unwritten Autobiography", the Portuguese Writers' Association (APE) announced on Tuesday.
The jury's decision was taken unanimously.
In the minutes justifying the choice, the jury considers that "as well as praising the cultural importance of memory, the novel is a magnificent psychological portrait of a woman who ends up challenging the patriarchal power that silenced and oppressed her for several decades. A discriminatory power that persists and prevails in today's society."
"The narrative gives full existence to the figure of Martha Bernays and the process of self-recognition she undertakes, based on a rereading of the correspondence exchanged with Freud during the period of their engagement, between 1882 and 1886," the APE said in a statement.
Inspired by her familiarity with psychoanalytic methods and practices, the narrator carries out a methodical deconstruction of the multifaceted and unavoidable figure of Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, it added.
"Teolinda Gersão's imaginative power in reconstructing the past and her narrative talent once again confirm the qualities of an exceptional writer," said the jury of the prize, which was coordinated by writer José Manuel de Vasconcelos and made up of authors, professors and researchers António Apolinário Lourenço, Carlos Nogueira, Isabel Cristina Rodrigues, Liberto Cruz and Maria João Reynaud.
"Martha Freud's Unwritten Autobiography" was published in October last year by Porto Editora.
This is the second time that Teolinda Gersão has been honoured with the Grand Prize for Novels, which she won in 1995 with "A Casa da Cabeça de Cavalo".
The writer has also won the APE Short Story Grand Prix twice, with "Prantos, amores e outros desvarios", in 2017, and "Histórias de Ver e Andar", in 2002.
The Portuguese Writers' Association - General Directorate for Books, Archives and Libraries (DGLAB) Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas is designed to honour a novel or novelistic book in Portuguese by a Portuguese author, and is worth €15,000.
Established in 1982 by the APE and currently sponsored by the DGLAB, Grândola City Council, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Camões Institute, the Grand Prize for Romance and Novel has already been awarded to 32 authors.
Born in 1940, Teolinda Gersão studied at the Universities of Coimbra, Tübingen and Berlin, read Portuguese at the Technical University of Berlin and was a full professor at the New University of Lisbon, where she taught German Literature and Comparative Literature.
She lived for three years in Germany and two years in São Paulo, Brazil, where she also got to know Mozambique and the old city of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), the setting for the novel "The Tree of Words".
Teolinda Gersão is the author of 20 books, and her work has been translated into 20 countries, making her one of the greatest Portuguese writers of our time.
Throughout her literary career, she has won the most prestigious national literary prizes, including the APE Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas, the PEN Club Prize (1981 and 1989), the prize from the Portuguese section of the International Association of Literary Critics (1999), the Camilo Castelo Branco Short Story Grand Prize, the Fernando Namora Prize (1999 and 2015) and the 2017 Vergílio Ferreira Literary Prize for her works.
She was a writer-in-residence at the University of Berkeley in 2004.
Some of her short stories and books have been adapted for film and theatre and staged in Portugal, Germany and Romania.
In 2018, she was awarded the Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and, in 2023, she won the 28th edition of the dst Grand Prize for Literature with her book "Júlia Mann's Return to Paraty".
Last year's winner of the APE/DGLAB Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas was the writer Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida with "Toda a ferida é uma beleza" (Every wound is a beauty).
AL/ADB // ADB
Lusa
