Dulce Maria Cardoso (Fonte Longa, 1964) is one of the most important contemporary Portuguese writers. She spent her childhood in Angola, and shortly after the Portuguese Carnation Revolution and Angola's independence in 1975, her family returned to Portugal, along with half a million other returnees who had left the Portuguese colonies when they declared independence. Before dedicating herself fully to literature, she studied law, worked as a lawyer and wrote film scripts. She is the author of six novels for which she has received numerous awards and recognitions. With the novel My (s)ympathies , for which she won the European Union Prize for Literature, she quickly rose to the very top of contemporary Portuguese prose, and therefore to the top of European literature. Her works have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and many other languages.