In a note published on the presidency’s website, De Sousa stressed that there “people that no words can describe in what they were and what they meant to us all,” talking about Bessa-Luís who died on Monday at the age of 96.

For him, Bessa-Luís was a “creator, a citizen, a portrait of the earthy force of a population and a profound connection” between the roots of the Portuguese nationals and “present and coming time.”

Bessa-Luís died on Monday at the age of 96, a family source told Lusa.

She was born on 15 October 1922 in Amarante, near Porto, and she had been out of the public light for health reasons for about 20 years.

Bessa-Luís stood out in 1954 with the novel “A Sibila”, which won her some awards, along with the book “Os Meninos de Ouro” and “O Princípio da Incerteza I – Joia de Familia.

She was awarded for the totality of her work with the Adelaide Ristori Prize, of the Centro Linguistico Italiano Dante Alighieri Roma, in 1975 and the Eduardo Lourenço Prize, in 2015.