EDEL Editora of Lisbon announces the publication in translation of Charles Reis Felix’s Vasco da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934. This novel, which appears in Portuguese as Vasco da Gama, Cary Grant e as Eleições de1934, tells the story of an election for mayor in a Massachusetts mill town during the Depression as seen through the eyes of a Portuguese boy, Seraphin.

Vasco da Gama, Cary Grant e as Eleições de1934, translated by Emília Madureira and Rui Zink, is the second volume in the series Portugal na América, edited by Rui Zink and published by EDEL Editora, in partnership with the Luso-American Foundation and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture.

The launching of Vasco da Gama, Cary Grant e as Eleições de1934, with presentations by Rui Zink and Frank Sousa, will follow Frank X. Gaspar’s workshop on writing fiction and poetry. The workshop and launching, organized by DISQUIET:The Dzanc Books International Program in Lisbon, in partnership with the Centro Nacional da Cultura and the Luso-American Foundation in Lisbon, will take place at the Foundation (R. do Sacramento à Lapa, 21) on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 6:30 p.m.

 “Charles Reis Felix brings the Portuguese to life with wit and humor, and above all, with an eye for telling detail that any American writer—of any ethnicity—should envy. This book captures the nature of immigrant New Bedford in a way that will make it relevant and entertaining reading for decades to come!” – Frank X. Gaspar

Charles Reis Felix (b. 1923) is the author of Crossing the Sauer, a critically-acclaimed WWII memoir, Through a Portagee Gate, a remarkably honest self-portrait and endearing tribute to the author’s father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915, and Tony, A New England Boyhood, a riveting autobiographical novel about Tony Alfama’s adventures growing up in the industrial city of Gaw.

The original, English-version of Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934, volume 5 of the Portuguese in the Americas Series published by Tagus Press at UMass Dartmouth, and other books by Charles Reis Felix, may be purchased at http://www.upne.com/distributed/dist_TPD.html.

From the Book:

“Both comedic and comic, Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934 gives us a full and generous picture of a time and place that now exist because of words on a page, populated by individualized characters and characteristic incidents. . . . As in Ernest Hemingway’s stories about Nick Adams in In Our Time or Sherwood Anderson’s about George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio, the boy-hero of Felix’s book goes though a series of episodes that serve to shape his understanding of the nature of the world. . .” — “From the Preface” by George Monteiro, Emeritus Professor, Brown University

Endorsements:

“‘The Portuguese are the unknown people,’ declaims Secundo Alves. ‘To be Portuguese in America is to be a stone dropped in the middle of the ocean.’ Alves, one of Charles Reis Felix’s colorful and memorable characters, may be overstating the case, but not by much. And Reis Felix, in his novel of vignettes, brings the Portuguese to life with wit and humor, and above all, with an eye for telling detail that any American writer-of any ethnicity-should envy. This book captures the nature of immigrant New Bedford in a way that will make it relevant and entertaining reading for decades to come!”-Frank X. Gaspar, author of Leaving Pico

“The cotton mills of New Bedford have long since followed its whaling fleet into oblivion. Gone the ugly labor disputes and turf wars that once dominated the region’s headlines. Dead the mill owners and operatives who spun gold from cotton. But by a literary miracle, not everyone who was witness to New Bedford’s decline and fall has forgotten it. In his wonderful new novel, the octogenarian writer (and New Bedford native) Charles Reis Felix tells what it was like to be young and proud and poor and Portuguese in the city of 1934, while a quartet of ethnic Americans (including the Yankee incumbent) duke it out in a wild mayoral election. Generously observed, vividly drawn, and beautifully realized, the fictional city that he author evokes is a New Bedford to celebrate for all its faults-and to read about time and time again.”-Llewellyn Howland III, author of The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History

CHARLES REIS FELIX was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, one of four children to Portuguese immigrant parents. He attended local public schools and graduated from New Bedford High in 1941. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941-43, at which time he was drafted into the U.S. Army. After the war he received a B.A. in history from Stanford University, and became an elementary school teacher. He is married, with two grown children, and lives with his wife Barbara in a cabin among the redwoods of Northern California.
His first published book, Crossing the Sauer (Burford Books), an account of his experience as a combat infantryman in WWII, was hailed by Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory, as “one of the most honest, unforgettable memoirs of the war I’ve read.”
Felix published Through a Portagee Gate (U Massachusetts Dartmouth), a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author’s father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915.

Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture
Frank F. Sousa, Director
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth