Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Revisiting a great poet
This is a great anthology of Camoes lyric work.I'm a fan of bilingual poetry editions.These translations are very fine, even though not literal.
As a literary translator once told me "You write English literature."The notes are good and background information is helpful.Anyone interested in 16th century literature, I think, will treasure this volume.

You can never have too much Camoes
Luis de Camoes is generally considered the greatest writer in the Portuguese language - on a par with Shakespeare in English, or Goethe in German.His most famous work is a long epic poem entitled "Os Lusiadas" or "The Portuguese" which describes in verse Portuguese exploration of the world (see my review).Camoes also wrote several hundred sonnets, unpublished in his lifetime.Most scholars think somewhere from 200 - 300 of the current sonnets variously ascribed to Camoes are his, with a few collections having over 400.I personally like his sonnets better than his epic poem, which can be stylized and obscure.

This book is a collection of 70 sonnets with the Portuguese and English translation on facing pages.The translator, William Baer, not only translates well, but he manages to also write his translation in rhyme.This is a tremendous accomplishment because Portuguese, like all Romance languages, has few word endings and is easy to rhyme while English, a polyglot Germanic language, is not.

That is not to say that the translations are perfect.They are not.But they're pretty good and anything approximating Camoes is great.Camoes is rather a playful cynic and most of these sonnets bring out those qualities.There is a sense of wistfulness ("saudade" in Portuguese) in most of them regarding lost love and homesickness.Camoes was a world travelling ne'er-do-well who was banished from his homeland, lost an eye battling the Moors, was imprisoned, and shipwrecked near the Mekong Delta, saving only his manuscript poems.He returned to his homeland only to watch a young adventurous King lead an army of nearly all the young men of the country to a massacre by a vastly greater Moorish force.Since this King had no relatives, the country was taken over by Spain for nearly a century and lost its status as a world power.

Camoes, an ardent patriot, was devastated and you can feel that devastation in all his writings.This sense of loss in his works makes his writing almost modern.If you're new to Camoes, this book is the best single place to start.And if you've ever loved and lost, or left your home for long years, or even felt nostalgic for past places and people, these poems will go right to your heart.Highly recommended, and I don't give out many 5 star recommendations.

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Book Description
Golden Goa recounts Grant Buday's travels in India by paralleling them with those of 16th-century Portuguese soldier and poet Luis de Camoens. Camoens, author of the Portuguese national epic The Lusiads, spent 14 years in India in the 1500s. Between 1979 and 1999 Buday visited India five times in pursuit of the story of the Portuguese. A magical, exquisite narrative, reminiscent both of the travel writing of Paul Bowles and Michael Ondaatje, this book explores the island of Diu, won by the Portuguese from the navy of Suleiman the Magnificent. Visiting Goa, Buday meets the Rodrigues family, people who inhabit a 200-year-old house full of history and rats. Throughout his journeys Buday encounters those who wish the Portuguese would come back-and those who are very glad they're gone. this comic, vivid, and moving story moves from Darjeeling in the east, to Jaisalmer in the west, to Cochin in the south. It explores Mother Teresa's Calcutta, the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala, and the Poona of Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh. Along the way, Buday is train wrecked, rat bit, badgered, and ripped off. Mostly, though, he's delighted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Awful!
This book is awful! I wish I could give it 0 stars! There is absolutely no sense of narrative in it. Mr. Buday tries to string his unrelated stories together by paralleling his travels with those of Luis de Camoens. But it is hard to see why he did so; the points of contact between the two are minimal at best and never relevant to each other.Well OK, both Mr. Buday and Camoens have been to Goa. (As have I, twice.) But this does not explain why a book entitled 'Golden Goa' does not have more to do with Goa. The book reads more like the sort rambling travel stories one might here from a friend at a Bar-B-Q.Given the quality of travel writing in general these days, Mr Buday's work is far below any level fit to be put between two covers and sold for $18! In fact I'd like my money back! Readers would do much better to spend their reading time elsewhere.

Grit, Gilt, Guffaws in Golden Goa
A delightful book that shines with sly self-deprecating wit; Buday's love of India blends with a series of comic and not-so-comic misadventures (rats, spit, train-wrecks, and more) to create a richly memorable armchairjourney.Personally, I was especially intrigued by the parallel story ofde Camoens, a 16th century Portuguese poet exiled to Goa after ill luck inmatters of the heart (now I want to read something by him, though it wouldhave to be in translation).The resonance with Buday's own romanticreversals (the last of his trips to India follows a divorce) and consequentlonging to travel far is kept muted, never self- indulgent, yet informs thestory with a bittersweet quality that lifts Golden Goa well aboverun-of-the-mill travel writing.The complex history of Goa as a Portuguesecolony within the polymorphous world of India is also fascinating, and theinterplay of past and present (including a hilarious encounter with a pairof dotty Scottish sisters laden with toilet paper and gin) is deftlyhandled.Throw in tautly elegant writing that does not fear the poetic,and what you get is a truly great read. ... Read more