New Portuguese Letters, written collectively by the three authors who became known as “The Three Marias,” is one of the most radical literary works to emerge from late-twentieth-century Europe. Published in Portugal in 1972 during the final years of the Estado Novo dictatorship, the book immediately provoked scandal and censorship for its open treatment of sexuality, power, and women’s lives.

The text refuses conventional form. Letters, poems, essays, fragments, historical reflections, and imagined voices intertwine to create a polyphonic exploration of patriarchy, colonialism, and desire. The authors draw inspiration from the seventeenth-century Letters of a Portuguese Nun, but transform that historical echo into a fiercely modern feminist critique.

The Portuguese government prosecuted the three writers for obscenity, triggering international protest and turning the book into a touchstone of the global feminist movement of the 1970s. What remains today is not just a political document but a formally daring work of literature that moves between lyric intensity and intellectual provocation.