Editor
A Handful of Grams: Goan Proverbs
Edited by damian lopes and Dominic Lopes
64 pages, paper, ISBN 0-9698172-0-7
Caju Press, Toronto, 1996.
First edition of 500 copies.
Designed and set by Bitwalla Design in Baskerville Handcut and ITC Tiepolo.
Printed and bound in Canada July 1996.
Read Excerpt…
This collection of Goan proverbs represents a unique mix of Mediterranean and South Asian cultures. Now a state of India, Goa was a Portuguese colony for over four centuries. The proverbs blend South Indian sarcasm in the face of destiny with a European delight in the weakness of others.
Includes a foreword, map, and glossary.
Reviews
Small and almost understated … this petite collection of proverbs by Damian and Dominic Lopes says things it takes other writers whole pages – or even books – to relay. ‘A chameleon doesn’t need to run’ (p 38), or ‘If the mad felow’s ours, we cry; if he’s another’s, we laugh’ (p 46). Sometimes the older wisdom is the most profound.– Rob McLennan, The Ottawa X Press, 25 June 1998
This book includes proverbs that are very well chosen … Some proverbs … do credit to the richness of the Konkani language – despite the diffuculties it faces in coping with today’s fast-changing, technology-oriented world – and also to the selection of Lopes & Lopes … Above all, those behind this work have contribued by making the wisdom of yesterday’s Goa available to a wider audience.
– Frederick Noronha, Deccan Herald (Bangalore, India), 16 March 1997
A friend of mine who is well read in South Asian literature, seeing this book on my desk, picked it up, thumbed through a few pages, and then took it home with him. When I asked him a few days later what he thought, he told me that, more than many novels he had read about India, this slim volume of ‘quirky and profound’ proverbs succeeded in dislocating him and drawing him into a distant culture. Continue …
– T.X. Lobo, Review, 1996
