Arroz de Palma — Special Edition

Time brings the family together and prepares lunch.

O Arroz de Palma is a multi-generational novel that follows, in a lyrical and deeply emotional style, the saga of a Portuguese family that leaves Viana do Castelo for Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century. They take with them a handful of rice gathered by the enigmatic Tia Palma — a simple gesture that becomes a magical symbol of unity, prosperity, and memory.

Time chooses the places and sets the table.

Many decades later, António, now an elderly man and the narrator, prepares a lunch to celebrate his parents' centenary wedding anniversary and revisits the stories of four generations, recalling experiences with his parents, siblings, wife, children, and grandchildren, and how they lived through joys and losses, arguments and reunions, how they became Brazilianised and dealt with unsettling themes: betrayal, divorce, the strength or fragility of roots, same-sex relationships, interracial marriages, the meanings of love, forgiveness.

Between captivating magical realism and a comforting poetry of everyday life, O Arroz de Palma shows us the essential: "Family is a difficult dish to prepare."