Sob o Signo de Mnemósine: Memória e Olvido em A Costa dos Murmúrios

This essay focuses on the ways in which Lídia Jorge's novel The Murmuring Coast (A Costa dos Murmúrios) deals with the memory of recent Portuguese history. I discuss the narrative within the broader context of contemporary debates on memory and forgetting, guided by the reflections of authors such as Andreas Huyssen and Pierre Nora. I argue that Jorge's text presents a revisionist approach to the history of the Portuguese Colonial War, contrasting the omissions of the official version of the events created by historiography with the live memories of the people who experienced them. Unlike most novels about armed conflicts, The Murmuring Coast depicts violence from the point of view of those who did not participate directly in fighting, such as women and the black population of Mozambique living in the capital. It rescues the voices of the marginalized and shows that literature can play a decisive role in the construction of collective memory.