The journalist and writer José Rodrigues dos Santos lamented this Wednesday that his books do not have the same impact in Portugal as they have abroad.

During an interview on the TVI program ‘Duas à 10’, following the release of his most recent book ‘O Jardim dos Animals with Soul’, José Rodrigues dos Santos was asked by Cláudio Ramos whether he already “pulses any prejudice in the skin “for being a journalist launching novels. “Did people look sideways?” asked the presenter.

“In certain media, the general public doesn’t, in certain media it happened and continues to happen. It’s normal”, confessed the journalist from RTP.

“I’m published in 20 languages, my novels come out and in Portugal hardly anyone makes a review and when they do it, it’s to speak ill. Abroad, they are constantly critical and are always meant to speak well. I have just published ‘The Wizard of Auschwitz’ and it is having a huge impact on literary criticism in Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and France. In Portugal the book was published and it was a silence”, he lamented, finding “various factors” to explain the success.

“It has to do with several factors. Envy is usually a factor. The public is not envious, but peers are, it is a normal phenomenon that we have to understand and accept”, he considered.

“But then there is another aspect which is: I am a person who has no connections with politicians, parties, there is an assembled industry which I am not a part of”, he said.

José Rodrigues dos Santos then gave a concrete example, that of Miguel Sousa Tavares.

“The case of Miguel Sousa Tavares is very interesting. He wrote a very important book, which was ‘Ecuador’ and the first prize he was called after two years and in Italy. In Portugal they were incapable, because it was a person who was not in the system”, he said.

It should be noted that after this conversation, Cláudio Ramos resorted to social media to praise the journalist.

“What I like most about people is the ability to surprise me with them,” he began by saying.

“Today, the visit to José Rodrigues dos Santos’ program could be summed up ‘only’ to a cool interview with the journalist who comes to promote his book. But not! What happened this morning was a burst of truths, one after the other, spoken by Him without fear or fear”, he wrote.