“Irene Marques is a brilliant novelist and storyteller. She is endowed with the gift of creating characters and narrating their stories over time and space. Daria is a cerebral novel about Portuguese identity, family, immigration, displacement, and remembering. Personal and poetic, Irene Marques’ aching narrative is a masterpiece of contemporary Portuguese-Canadian fiction, a meditation on human experience in Portugal, Canada, and the former Portuguese colonial empire. It is a necessary book for anyone interested in women’s struggles within and outside of patriarchy, dictatorship, colonialism, anticolonialism, immigration, neoliberalism, and globalization. Daria is a novel that conveys the dreams and the wisdom of those who left home and country.”
?Isabel A. Ferreira Gould, independent scholar

“Brilliant and captivating, the novel Daria provides a look into the struggles and triumphs of being in a new land. Irene Marques’ writing moves extraordinarily between countries and she masterfully creates scenes of beauty and horror, happiness and sadness and, above all, hope and resilience. Books like this offer the world and invite us to experience other lives. This moving tale of dreams and healing will leave you yearning for the journey to continue long after the last word.”
?Sonia Saikaley, author of The Allspice Bath

In Daria, Irene Marques paints a sprawling canvas of interconnected narratives whose settings range from present-day Canada to a village in Portugal’s Beira Alta region to colonial-era Mozambique and the Portuguese prison camp in Tarrafal, Cabo Verde. By turns transcendently lyrical and unsparingly brutal, the novel spins together stories within stories, intricately woven dreams, and fantastic visions as it follows its protagonist on her immigrant journey.”
? Anna M. Klobucka , Professor of Portuguese and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth