O The defining moment in Ana Margarida de Carvalho’s affirmation as a great writer came with the publication of her second novel, in 2016. Three years earlier, “Que Importa a Fúria do Mar”, her award-winning literary debut, had shown remarkable narrative ease, still very much tied to classic models of how a story should be told and a kind of reckoning with the profession (journalism) that she had recently abandoned, after practicing it for decades. “You Can’t Live in a Cat’s Eyes” was something else. It began with an extraordinary chapter, narrated by a “wooden saint”, aboard a slave ship (operating at the end of the 19th century, already after the supposed end of slavery), a “seafaring tomb” that sinks with a dramatic furore worthy of the best moments of “Tragic-Maritime History”. Afterwards, the book follows the survivors, prisoners in the house clos of a beach closed by high ravines, somewhere in Brazil, where the remembrance of its stories creates a fascinating mosaic of human experiences.