Exercícios de estilo. Colecção Novas Direcções, 6.

Lisbon, Editorial Estampa, 1971.. FIRST EDITION. 8°, original illustrated wrappers (lower corners dog-eared; creases to spine). Light toning. In good condition. Author's signed and dated nine-line presentation inscription in green ink on title page: "Para // Jorge Listopad // - o meu Mecenas da estranja // (recordando e agradecendo ter-me // ajudado á renda da casa vai // fazer um ano) // a homenagem do seu // Luiz Pacheco // 18/8/71. Five lines of notes in ink on blank verso of final leaf (by Jorge Listopad?). 252 pp. (including an initial blank l.), (1 l. advt., 1 l. colophon). *** FIRST EDITION; the text was published again in 1973, and a third edition, revised and augmented, appeared in 1998. Difficult to categorize, this book has been described as a "romance de natureza fragmentária e de carácter experimentalista …." The bohemian critic, polemicist, writer of fiction and publisher Luiz Pacheco, collaborated in A afixação proibida, the first Portuguese surrealist manifesto. Provenance: Franti ek Listopad (born Ji í Synek, Prague, November 26, 1921), in Portugal known as Jorge Listopad, is a Czech poet, prose writer, essayist, and theatre and television director. He promotes Czech literature and culture abroad and is regarded as an expert on Central European thought and cultural output. He was the co-founder of the daily newspaper Mladá fronta. In 1947, he was the press attaché of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Paris and an editor of the Parisian weekly Parallele 50. In Paris he knew personally Aragon, Beckett, Camus, Celine, Cocteau, Ionesco, Malraux, Marcel Marceau, Marguerite Duras, Mitterand, Romain Roland, Sartre, Tristan Tzara, among others. After February 1948 he was recalled, but remained in Paris, working for ORTF until 1958, when he left for Portugal, where he has lived since. He is said to have learned Portuguese by reading O crime do Padre Amaro in Portuguese, without a dictionary. Listopad has written more than 25 volumes of poetry, stories, and novels, and has translated Fernando Pessoa into Czech. He worked 32 years for RTP and has directed some 70 theatrical works in Portugal, as well as elsewhere - for example, in Zürich, where he directed Vaclav Havel's The Office.*** See Ana da Silva in Machado, Dicionário de literatura portuguesa, pp. 358-9; also Jorge Colaço in Biblos, III, 1338-40; and Dicionário cronologico de autores portugueses, V, 426-8.