"There is no doubting the authenticity of Carvalho's vision and the
originality and severity of her voice." --Joyce Carol Oates, The New
York Review of Books
For ten years Dora has ritualistically mourned her husband's death, a
pointless ritual that forced her to rely on support from old friends and
acquaintances. Her beloved husband, a "Christ" so principled he rejected
any ambition whatsoever as a construct of a corrupt society, succeeded
only in leaving Dora and their daughter with nothing. When her
mother-in-law reveals a shattering secret about their marriage one
night, Dora's narrative of her own life is destroyed. Three generations
of women--Dora, her daughter, and mother-in-law--must navigate a world
that has been shaped by the blundering men off in the distance, figures
barely present who nonetheless define the lives of the women they would
call mother, wife, or lover.
Narrated through the gritted teeth of an acquaintance, Empty
Wardrobes--Maria Judite de Carvalho's cutting 1966 novel, translated
from Portuguese for the first time by Margaret Jull Costa and introduced
by Kate Zambreno--is a tale of women who are trapped within the quiet
devastation of a patriarchal society and preyed upon by the ambient
savageries that perch in its every crevice.
