Peixoto’s new novel Sunday Lunch (“Almoço de Domingo”) is a tribute to the Portuguese entrepreneur Rui Nabeiro, founder of the Delta Cafés, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday on 28 March 2021.
With great poetic power, the author traces the life of a man who wanted to become “a rich man of a different kind” and who today is a symbol of entrepreneurial commitment. Coming from the simplest of backgrounds and growing up in the small town of Campo Maior in the Alto Alentejo near the Spanish border, he succeeds in developing the small family business into an internationally operating corporate empire without sacrificing his humanity. Peixoto accompanies his protagonist through the two days before and on his birthday itself and lets individual episodes of his career emerge in short flashbacks. But “Sunday Lunch” is far more than just a biographical novel.
Written with genuine empathy, the book is a reflection on old age and death, on the uniqueness of every human being, but above all it is a celebration of a successful life whose richness is expressed less in the material than in the spiritual.

In Lisbon in the late 1990s, two writers meet: the young José in his early 30s, in the midst of a life crisis, and the established José Saramago at the height of his career. Following his debut, the young José is now expected to write a second novel, but he can‘t make any progress and is addicted to alcohol and gambling. He has enormous debts and agrees to write a Saramago biography, even if he finds his books rather long and difficult. Saramago himself is interested in the author of his biography and is ready for interviews. From this relationship, a story is born that mixes reality and fiction. While the main plot is heading towards the announcement of Saramago being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 8 October 1998, the young José, true to a statement by the Portuguese intellectual that all writing is autobiographical, is increasingly merging with his subject. Peixoto leads the reader into a cabinet of mirrors from which there is no escape.

Between Bangkok and Las Vegas, José Luís Peixoto returns to non-fiction with an astonishing, layered book of unforeseen relationships, moving from the most intimate account to the most remote and exuberant of descriptions. The Imperfect Path (“O Caminho Imperfeito”) is itself the long journey to a Thailand beyond the normal tourist haunts, exploring lesser known aspects of its culture, society, history and religion, among many others. The sinister discovery of several parcels containing parts of a human body at a post office in Bangkok cause, with unpredictable consequences, his wanderings to become an ordeal. Every episode of this eccentric investigation forms “The Imperfect Path” and, at the same time, constitutes a search for the meaning of travel, writing, and life itself.

In his new novel In Your Belly (“Em Teu Ventre”), José Luís Peixoto addresses one of the defining religious events of the 20th century: the appearance of the Virgin Mary before the eyes of three children in the Portuguese village of Fátima in 1917. After lengthy interviews, the Catholic Church recognized this miracle, turning Fátima into a place of worldwide pilgrimage. But what is behind the phenomenon? Peixoto is interested in people, and so he chooses the ten-year-old Lúcia as the protagonist of his novel. She is the youngest of five children and therefore especially dear to her mother Maria’s heart. Although piously educated, Lúcia is a very headstrong and dreamy girl. For her, the arrival of the Madonna means a sudden end of her childhood and separation from her birth mother. Situated between Christian mysticism and historical research, Em Teu Ventre is a piece of fictional biography of the figure of Sister Lúcia, now revered as a saint in Portugal. Without deciding between reason and superstition, the novel is an ode to both the freedom of faith and the love between mother and child.

The sleepy village of Galveias is home to both long-established families with their rivalries and feuds, like the brothers José and Justino who fell out over their inheritance and haven’t spoken for over fifty years, and newcomers like Isabella, the beautiful Brazilian who runs the bakery that, at night, also functions as a brothel. After the village is struck by some sort of mysterious meteor, the bread starts tasting of sulphur, relationships are reshaped and a series of events is set in motion: it stops raining for nine months; the two brothers are finally reconciled with each other and with their past; Isabella is mistaken for a cork thief and accidentally shot. Then finally a baby girl who doesn’t smell of sulphur is born, and the spell is broken. This beautifully written novel is brimming with astute observations and depictions of human behaviour, of life itself and how it is shaped and changed. The characters that inhabit the captivating microcosm of Galveias inevitably draw the reader in with their intertwining stories that come together as one.

Book (“Livro”) confirms José Luís Peixoto as one of the leading contemporary Portuguese novelists, and also as an author of increasing importance on the international literary scene. This book chooses as its backdrop the extraordinary saga of Portuguese emigration to France, told through a gallery of unforgettable characters and the luminous writing of José Luís Peixoto. From a village in Portugal to Paris, and from popular culture to the most erudite of literary references, are revealed to us the traces of a past that took thousands of Portuguese in search of better conditions and a future of dual nationality. Overwhelming and striking, Book exposes the magnitude of the dream and the rawness, ironic, tender or grotesque, of reality. Through stories of lives, meetings and farewells, the reader is led to a disconcerting ending beyond the frontiers of literature.

What is this permanent itch on the head of every writer in the world? No anti-lice shampoo can soothe it. This widespread affliction makes the headlines of every newspaper and intrigues readers of this and every other book in existence. It is only when the protagonists of children´s books undertake the journey to enter the heads and creative minds of the itching authors that they make a great discovery: there are no lice! The itch that the authors have been feeling are new ideas, stories and characters. The itch won´t be relieved by shampoos or shaving, but it can be treated by expressing the authors´ creativity!
All the Writers of the World Have Their Heads Full of Lice (“Todos os Escritores do Mundo Têm a Cabeça Cheia de Piolhos“) is a beautifully written and illustrated book that focusses on the joy of writing and reading. It sparks young readers´ interest in creativity and upholds imagination as a great gift and important element of human life.

The protagonist of José Luís Peixoto’s first children’s book is a child of the rain. With such a unique mother, so necessary to everyone, he has to learn to share with the world the thing that is most important to him: maternal love. With exceptional tenderness, poetry and disarming simplicity, The Mother That Rained (“A Mãe Que Chovia”) honours and exalts one of nature’s most powerful forces: the unconditional love of mothers.