At a summer festival, music is, most of the time, the main attraction. But in recent years, major events in Portugal have been trying to go beyond convention, giving a stage to other forms of cultural expression.
And at this edition of NOS Alive, on the Passeio Marítimo de Algés, in Lisbon, the world of literature is being offered a privileged way of engaging with the public, through an initiative which, according to the festival organisers, (source in Portuguese) takes shape as a "space dedicated to books, writing and the power of stories".
This Literary Stage, as it has been dubbed, is one of the main innovations of what is already the 18th edition of one of Portugal’s busiest summer festivals, which this year runs from 9 to 11 July and has a maximum capacity of 55,000 people per day. A threshold that will be reached this Friday and also on Saturday, days for which tickets are already sold out.
Valter Hugo Mãe, whose work has been translated into several languages (including titles such as A Desumanização, O paraíso são os outros and O apocalipse dos trabalhadores,), was among the Portuguese writers invited to lead one of the literary conversations held on NOS Alive’s opening day, which began on Thursday, in a session hosted by the writer and broadcaster Ana Markl.
