The President of the Republic, António José Seguro, today congratulated “with great joy” writer Lídia Jorge for the Camões Award 2026, and considered it to be “one of the great voices in contemporary literature of all languages”.
© Rita Franca/NurPhoto via Getty Images
02/07/2026
by
Lusa
“It is with great joy and honor that the President of the Republic celebrates and greets the writer Lídia Jorge, today distinguished with the Camões Prize, the highest literary reward of our language”, reads on a note published on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic on the Internet.
The head of state says that Lídia Jorge “built a stunning and tragic polyphony, moving and full of intelligence about human nature and the Portuguese condition”, with books such as “The Coast of Murmurs”, “The Wind Whistling in the Cranes” and “Misericórdia”.
“His work, distributed by the novel, short story, essay, chronicle, theater and poetry, opened unique paths in our literature and in the way of thinking Portugal, our sensitivity, the life of Portuguese women and the memory of striking events for the recent history of our country,” he adds.
According to the President of the Republic, “in this measure, it is a barometer that has detected the signs of change and transformative movements of society, without ever losing an aesthetic nature of first magnitude, which makes it one of the great voices in contemporary literature of all languages”.
“The Camões Prize is one of the corollaries of a literary career that the President of the Republic welcomes and congratulates. His voice is now our voice”, says António José Seguro.
Lídia Jorge, a novelist and contista, was born in the Algarve on June 18, 1946, in Boliqueime, in the municipality of Loulé. She served as State Counsellor between 2021 and 2026, during the second term of the former President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Among other awards, she was also awarded the Person Award 2025.
The Camões Prize for Literature in Portuguese was established by Portugal and Brazil in 1988, with the aim of distinguishing authors “whose work contributes to the projection and recognition of the literary and cultural heritage of the common language”, and was first awarded in 1989 to Portuguese writer Miguel Torga.