The Three Marias

Rachel de Queiroz · 1910–2003 · Brazil

Originally As Três Marias (Portuguese) · translated by Fred P. Ellison

Why it matters

Three convent-school friends, all named Maria, come of age together in provincial Ceará, then watch adulthood pull them toward very different fates neither friendship nor faith prepared them for. Queiroz's early feminist bildungsroman, written before she was thirty.

At a glance

A linear coming-of-age narrative told in clear, unadorned prose.