Nuno Bermudes

Poet, fiction writer, and journalist. Born in Mozambique, he lived in Portugal between 1927 and 1947, where he completed his academic education and made his literary debut, published in Eco dos Olivais, Coimbra. It was as an employee of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) that he returned to Mozambique, where he would live from 1947 to 1975. Author of a diverse set of titles, from poetry to fiction (especially short stories), not forgetting chronicles and reports. Despite his restless personality, he was a discreet figure in Mozambican literary life during the colonial period. Based in the city of Beira, a part-time radio host and journalist, he collaborated for about thirty years in the press of that former colony, namely in Itinerário, A Voz de Moçambique, Guardian, Notícias, A Tribuna, Notícias da Beira, etc. He also contributed to newspapers and magazines in Portugal – Diário de Lisboa, Diário Popular, Diário de Notícias, Jornal Português de Economia e Finanças, Eva, Vida Mundial, Século Ilustrado, Colóquio and Colóquio-Letras – and in Brazil, such as O Estado de S. Paulo, Jornal de Letras, Narceja, Leitura, etc. He was one of the founders of the Centro de Cultura e Arte da Beira. He launched and directed, with the poet Fernando Couto (father of the writer Mia Couto), the collections «Poetas de Moçambique» and «Prosadores de Moçambique». Exílio Voluntário (1966) is, perhaps, the most emblematic of his poetry books. Eugénio Lisboa emphasizes the «radically resigned» character of his skepticism, the elegance of his prose (which was no less incisive), and the echoes of Régio and Torga. In 1971, the text of a conference in which Nuno Bermudes lectured on Mozambique in the Current Portuguese Literary Panorama was published. And, in 1982, as a separate publication in the Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, the essay Dinah Silveira de Queiroz Sob o Signo da Imortalidade. If we are to place the author within a "Mozambican" genealogy, we cannot fail to mention the names of Reinaldo Ferreira, Glória de Sant'Anna, Fonseca Amaral, Rui Knopfli, Vítor Matos e Sá, Ilídio Rocha, or Sebastião Alba. He is represented in several anthologies, including one on contemporary African narrative, published in Moscow in 1972, Sovremennaia Afrikanskaia Novella.