PRO CONNECT
Julieta Almeida Rodrigues became a multi award-winning author with her debut novel, Eleonora and Joseph. Passion, Tragedy, and Revolution in the Age of Enlightenment (New Academia Publishing). Besides being a Book Excellence Award Nominee in the Europe category 2024, she is also the Fiction Winner of the Literary Titan Gold Book Award December, 2023, the Historical Fiction Winner, Maincrest Media Book Award, 2023, and the Fiction Winner, Hollywood Book Festival, 2023. In 2022, she won the Grand Prize, Goethe Awards for Late Historical Fiction, which recognizes emerging new talent and outstanding works in Post-1750s Historical Fiction. Among others, Eleonora and Joseph has been highly praised by Kirkus Reviews and Publisher's Weekly. Born and raised in Portugal, Rodrigues earned a PhD at Columbia University, where the renowned Margaret Mead was her dissertation sponsor. Rodrigues is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Rogue and Other Portuguese Stories and On the Way to Red Square (both also by New Academia Publishing). The latter is a fictionalized account of her life in the diplomatic circles of Moscow in the 1980s. She also published a narrative work about Sintra, Portugal, titled Hora Crepuscular/Drawing Dusk/La Hora Crepuscular (Agir, Execução Gráfica). She is a member of the Pen Club of Portugal and the Fulbright Commission Team of Evaluators in Portugal (2014 Prize for International Cooperation, the Prince of Asturias Foundation). She has taught at the University of Lisbon and at Georgetown University, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the New School (twice). She has spoken at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, The Chawton House Library in the United Kingdom, The International Conference on the Short Story, The American Portuguese Studies Association, the Historical Writers of America, and The Chanticleer International Conference, among other institutions and cultural societies. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Historical Novel Society New York City Chapter and co-managed its Guest Speaker Program at the Jefferson Market Library from 2016 to 2020. She divides her time between Portugal and the United States.
“A riveting work of great psychological complexity. A model of historical literature that combines scholarly rigor with subtle characterization.”
– Kirkus Reviews
In Rodrigues’ novel, largely set in the early 19th century, two prominent Portuguese intellectuals struggle to spread ideas of liberty while opposed by powerfully illiberal forces.
As a teenager, Joseph Correia da Serra fell deeply in love with Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, a Portuguese noblewoman who was also a firebrand poet and intellectual. They planned to marry, but then Joseph suddenly left her; due to his father’s financial distress, he thought it more prudent to pursue a religious career offered to him with the support of the Duke of Lafões. Eleonora is devastated, but she goes on to become a notable author and the librarian to Carolina, the queen of Naples. But as Eleonora’s political views become more aggressively revolutionary, Carolina’s become more conservative. Eleonora finally becomes a fully committed Jacobin and the editor of the progressive republican newspaper Il Monitore Napoletano, and she’s arrested for her views in 1799. Decades later, Joseph, now in his 60s and famous for his achievements as a botanist, discovers Eleonora’s memoirs in Thomas Jefferson’s library while visiting his home in Virginia. Rodrigues conveys this emotionally gripping and philosophically lively story in two formats: Eleonora’s remembrance right before her execution, and Joseph’s conversations with Jefferson. Eleonora is effectively painted as a tragic figure; after Joseph left her, she endured an abusive marriage, and she paid a steep price for her political convictions. Joseph is shown to have never quite recovered from their separation; in fact, he devoted himself to his intellectual life at the expense of his emotional one: “I had split myself in two: I had crushed the emotional side of me, the part that had loved a young Portuguese woman with dark, contemplative eyes. The root of my spiritual alienation, if I could call it that, lay in this division.” The author’s research is impeccable, but her novel offers much more than historical edification; it’s also a riveting work of great psychological complexity.
A model of historical literature that combines scholarly rigor with subtle characterization.
Pub Date: July 21, 2020
Page count: 198pp
Publisher: New Academia Publishing/ The Spring
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Hometown
Sintra, Portugal - UNESCO World Heritage Site
ELEONORA AND JOSEPH: PASSION, TRAGEDY, AND REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FICTION WINNER, HOLLYWOOD BOOK FESTIVAL, 2023
ELEONORA AND JOSEPH: PASSION, TRAGEDY, AND REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FICTION WINNER, LITERARY TITAN GOLD BOOK AWARD DECEMBER, 2023
ELEONORA AND JOSEPH: PASSION, TRAGEDY, AND REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: EUROPE HONOREE, BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD, 2024
ELEONORA AND JOSEPH: PASSION, TRAGEDY, AND REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: HISTORICAL FICTION WINNER, MAINCREST MEDIA BOOK AWARD, 2023
ELEONORA AND JOSEPH: PASSION, TRAGEDY, AND REVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: GRAND PRIZE WINNER, THE GOETHE BOOK AWARDS, CHANTICLEER INT'L AWARDS, 2022
BOOKLIFE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, 2024
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