Love in Lands of Intimacy and Resistance

Writer Rafael Branco returns with a provocative, sensitive and profoundly human work.

MY HANDSOME MAN, MY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, MY LOVE — INTIMATE CHRONICLES brings together fictionalised stories inspired by real-life experiences of women and men who dare to love amid precarious circumstances, uncertainty and profound social complexity.

Set mainly in São Tomé and Príncipe, these chronicles explore love in all its forms: passionate love that burns and fades away; supportive love built through everyday life; clandestine relationships; multiple loves; the loves that save us and those that deceive us. Through compelling prose that blends oral storytelling, social criticism and subtle humour, Rafael Branco gives voice to intensely vivid and captivating characters.

More than a collection of love stories, this book is a journey into the soul of a people, into the contemporary dilemmas of emotional relationships and the creative ways in which people confront life.

“The present is the time of all loves and all orgasms.” — Rafael Branco

This book is intended for young and mature adult readers interested in authentic, emotionally intense and socially engaged narratives. It is especially suited to readers from the African and Portuguese-speaking diasporas, to those who are experiencing or have experienced complex emotional relationships, and to students and professionals in the fields of Literature, Sociology, Anthropology and Gender Studies.

With language rooted in oral expression and characters who feel real and vividly alive, MY HANDSOME MAN, MY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, MY LOVE invites readers seeking representation, reflection and humanity in literature.