Ghosts

Clara Rowland & Madalena Matoso

Good ghosts are hard to catch: they disappear when we most want to see them, they show themselves when we’re distracted, they blend into our everyday gestures.

In this book, we try to learn to spot them where we think that they’re best hidden: in our shadows, echoes, reflections; in the names we give to things, to houses, to people; in the texts we write, in the stories we read, in the films we get lost in until we no longer know which side of the mirror we’re on.

Ghost stories without any ghosts? In the pages of this book, made up stories appear alongside stories from books, paintings, photographs or films. They’re all, each in their own way, invitations to explore this ghost life which mixes with our own.

Clara Rowland is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Portuguese Studies at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her main area of interest is Comparative Studies, focusing on issues of representation and materiality in modern literature and film.