Soror Mariana Alcoforado - Cartas Portuguesas (Ed. bilingue)

"I do not know the name of the person to whom they were written, nor of the person who translated them, but it seems to me that, by publishing them, I should not incur their displeasure." This was the warning to the unsuspecting reader who encountered, for the first time, this book written in French and published in 1669. The story told there, in five anonymous letters, is that of a Portuguese nun cloistered in a convent in Beja, who fell in love with a passing French officer. After the officer's departure, the woman writes to him in a mixture of love and hate, reclaiming her passion. Written in masterful and exuberant prose, it soon sparked readings worldwide, speculations, apparently newly discovered letters, translations, replies from its recipient, pirated editions—a fascination that still today holds a mystery: what ardent passion was this, real or literary?