João Albano Fernandes - O Senhor do Adeus

“One day I was on the street and someone waved to me.
And I waved back.”

João Manuel Serra, The Lord of Farewell

There are encounters that are born from a wave. A simple, almost invisible gesture that crosses the windshield and touches someone on the other side. In this novel, winner of the 2022 Montijo Young Prize, João Albano Fernandes constructs the story of a man who, in the solitude of his remaining days, discovers that saying hello can be more urgent than any farewell.

The old man from Saldanha has no family, no hurry, nowhere to go. He has back pain, a deceased mother with whom he still argues, and an arm that one day, almost by chance, rises to wave. The city responds. And in this minimal exchange—a honk, a hand in the air—perhaps the essential resides: the certainty that no one wants to pass through this world unseen.

Between the Prazeres Cemetery and Saldanha Square, between visits to his mother's grave and the cold nights he spends at his post like a lighthouse on the coast, the old man weaves an unlikely community. Anonymous drivers, a boy on a yellow bicycle, neighbors rediscovering the gesture of greeting. And, in the midst of it all, the absence of an old love, a poem you no longer remember, and that question we all ask: was it worth it?

As Pedro Abrunhosa called it: “I am a statue of skin and dreams, / The Happy Prince of Saldanha, / I hide swallows in my chest, / The heart belongs to whoever catches it.” This book speaks of what makes us human: fragility, memory, the fear of not having done it in time, and that strange thing of needing others even when we have learned to do without them. It's not about saving the world. It's simply about not letting anyone pass by without a wave.