O NAIPE EM FALTA
« Perhaps the hardest thing is not to forgive another person in the moral sense, but to accept their freedom. Not an idealised freedom, but a raw, brutal one. The freedom to be other, to lose their way, to look at the world through a lens that will always remain beyond our reach. To see them is not merely to do them justice, but to acknowledge their mystery, the irreducible distance that separates us. There is always a point at which everything becomes blurred, a light of perception that goes out. It is there, in that space where language cannot reach, that a love may be born without demands or absolution, capable of making room for what cannot be explained.» (p. 78)
Hotel La Solitude, the author’s first novel, is structured around three suits. Diamonds, Clubs and Spades. Irene, Luís and Vasco. Fear, reason, impulse. None complete in themselves, all necessary.
One suit was missing. Hearts. The one that observes, contains and believes itself to be in control.
O Naipe em Falta (The Missing Suit) is that fourth element. The author steps into the frame, stops pretending to be detached and accepts becoming part of the material of his own writing.
Three days in a hotel in inland Portugal, the same room, a camera, characters who refuse to disappear, a mind that never stops. What emerges is a confrontation with lived experience and with writing itself. Fragmentary, contradictory, at times ironic or absurd.
O Naipe em Falta can be read independently of Hotel La Solitude. But readers familiar with the three narrators of the first novel will encounter them here in a different form. Not as fiction, but as parts of the person who created them.
Book Details
Title: O Naipe em Falta (The Missing Suit)
Author: Vítor Leal Barros
Publisher: Idioteque, 2026
ISBN: 978-989-36274-6-4
Legal Deposit: 568431/26
Dimensions: 240 x 162 x 7 mm
Pages: 92
Price (incl. VAT): €13.50 + shipping fees
IN THE PRESS
Porto Canal · José Manuel Monteiro · 23 Oct 2026
TV Show «Por Perto»
A conversation with José Manuel Monteiro on the programme «Por Perto», about «O Naipe em Falta», its connection to «Hotel La Solitude», and a creative path spanning writing, architecture and photography.
Rádio Boa Nova · Mafalda Correia · 14 Oct 2026
Books Programme «Agora é que me livro!»
An interview with Mafalda Correia on Rádio Boa Nova’s literary programme «Agora é que me livro!», about the origins of «O Naipe em Falta» and its connection to «Hotel La Solitude».
«During the writing of this book, the author explains that the characters were leading him in another direction: to imagine himself in that same hotel room, with a story different from those of his creations. This was how his new book came about, in which the author himself steps onto the page.»