Empty Wardrobes Maria Judite De Carvalho Margaret Jull Costa Translation by Maria Judite De Carvalho, Margaret Jull Costa (translation), Kate Zambreno (introduction) instant download after payment.

Off in the distance, where you can barely see or hear them, are the bumbling men who shape & limit the lives of the women they call wife, family, or lover. 

Patriarchy, it turns out, offers very little wiggle room to the subjected, no matter how rebellious or well brought up, how young, old, rich, or poor. In Empty Wardrobes, Maria Judite de Carvalho's 1978 novel, translated here from Portuguese into English for the first time by Margaret Jull Costa, the widow Dora enters her tenth year of grieving. Her husband, "a Christ" so principled he rejects any ambition whatsoever as a construct of a corrupt society, left her & their daughter with nothing. 

When her mother-in-law reveals a world-shattering secret about the marriage late one night, Dora's narrative of her own life is destroyed, emptied of meaning as thoroughly as it was of material resources at the moment of her husband's sudden death. Dora & her daughter have little recourse but to start again, each in their...

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Maria Judite de Carvalho (1921-1998) is widely considered one of Portugal’s most important writers of the second half of the 20th century. Born & educated in Lisbon, with a secondary education in France, Carvalho’s work spans painting, journalism, and fiction, with a specialization in the short story & novella forms.

Margaret Jull Costa has worked as a translator for over 30 years, translating the works of many Spanish & Portuguese writers, among them novelists: Javier Marías, José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, & Teolinda Gersão.