Three men haunt these pages. Perhaps they are tormented ghosts who cannot find rest. All three have been expelled in some way, sent on solitary journeys into the night. Celestino, an old slave trader, returns to the solitude of his home and garden after a life of horrors. Boa Morte da Silva, an Angolan who served on the Portuguese side in the Colonial War and has become a valet in Lisbon, writes endlessly to his daughter, asking for her forgiveness. And Bruma, an enslaved man, initiates a young writer, Eça de Queirós, into the world of literature.

In discrete yet overlapping tales, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s Three Stories of Forgetting explores the experiences of those who live within the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire. In these unstable chapters, we find incarnations of our despair at the questions that history does not answer, and allegories that may yet reveal new ways of seeing through the dark.

“A brilliant, yet understated, critique of a past that Portugal most likely hopes to forget. Lyrical, enigmatic, and subtle: an accomplished work that considers fraught histories at the most personal level.”
―Kirkus Reviews

“[A] contemplative triptych . . . Heart-wrenching and uplifting . . . A well-crafted depiction of the hidden bonds between individuals and empire.”
―Publishers Weekly

“Three Stories of Forgetting spells out the nightmare of history in the beautiful language of dreams.”
―Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book

“[An] excellent collection.”
―The Brooklyn Rail

“A symphony of resistance.”
―Público (Portugal)

“A sumptuous triptych.”
―Télérama (France)

“Impressionistic . . . Poetic and precise.”
―Le Monde (France)

“Let the sentences melt in your mouth . . . One gets almost dizzy amid the beauty of the words, the sounds. An intoxicating read.”
―Folha de São Paulo (Brazil)

“Pereira de Almeida’s sharp, sensual prose speaks of the inescapable past and of [a] trembling humanity. A rarity.”
―Le Matricule des Anges (France)

“Each of these three tales exerts a singular power of fascination . . . Magical.”
―Le Temps (Switzerland)

About the Author

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida was born in Luanda, Angola, and raised in Portugal. She is the author of acclaimed novels including That Hair, a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize, and her work has won the Vergílio Ferreira Prize and the Oceanos Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta and Words Without Borders, among other publications.

About the Translator

Alison Entrekin is an award-winning translator from the Portuguese. Her translations include Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart, Paulo Lins’s City of God, and João Guimarães Rosa’s modernist classic Vastlands: The Crossing. Her work has earned her the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize and Sydney PEN Medallion, and the 2022 Australasian Association of Writing Programs–Ubud Writers & Readers Festival Translators’ Prize.

Book Details

Author: Djaimilia Pereir de Almeida

Translator: Alison Entrekin

Publisher: Macmillan/FSG Originals 

Publication Date: December 9, 2025

Language: English

Paperback: 304 pp

Available @ Amazon.com