Three Stories of Forgetting

The protagonists of this contemplative triptych from Pereira de Almeida (That Hair) wrestle with the legacy of Portuguese colonialism. In “Vision of Plants,” Captain Celestino retires from the African slave trade in 1833 to tend to the garden of his childhood home in a village outside Porto. Known among locals as a pirate who plundered the African coast, he finds solace in plants who know nothing of him: “They didn’t care if he had found in them a reason to live or that he loved them.” “Seaquake,” set in the early 2000s, follows Boa Morte, a security guard in Lisbon who’s haunted by memories of fighting fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence and missing the young daughter he left behind in Angola. “Bruma,” the collection’s most heart-wrenching and uplifting entry, follows an aging enslaved man who decides to build a cabin of his own beyond the boundary of the plantation he works on. Toward the end of his life, he finds respite in his imagination, which brings him to faraway lands. Pereira de Almeida sustains a melancholy mood across the stories, each of which is infused with the regrets and yearning of its main character. The result is a well-crafted depiction of the hidden bonds between individuals and empire. Agent: Jonah Straus, Straus Literary. (Dec.)