Prença remembers the "brilliant translator" and "companion" that was Filipe Guerra

"At Editorial Presença, we deeply feel this loss. Filipe Guerra was more than a brilliant translator, he was a true companion on our journey. He leaves an indelible mark on the history of our company and in the hearts of all those who had the privilege of working with him," he said in a statement.

Translator Filipe Guerra died on Sunday, aged 77, at the Garcia de Orta Hospital in Almada, after a long illness.

For decades, Filipe Guerra dedicated himself to direct translation from Russian, in collaboration with his wife, Nina Guerra, with whom he formed one of the most respected literary translation duos in Portugal, highlights the publisher.

"Together, they signed translations that are absolutely central to our catalogue, including 'War and Peace', 'Anna Karenina' [by Tolstoy], 'Demons', 'Crime and Punishment', 'The Idiot', 'The Gambler' [Dostoevsky] and many other works that have left their mark on the imagination of our readers".

The publishing group recalls the statements made by Filipe Guerra, in one of his rare interviews, in which he stated that "Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are the main heirs of a new, innovative way of writing, based on realism, initiated by Pushkin and Gogol".

For the translator, "the books by these two authors, as artistic works, remain current: they are the source, the still living spring of what is written today."

Presença also commits to "continuing to honor the legacy they built together".

In addition to translating the great Russian classics for this publishing group, Filipe Guerra and Nina Guerra also signed translations for other publishers such as Relógio d'Água and Assírio e Alvim.

Born in 1948, Filipe Guerra graduated in Romance Philology from the Faculty of Arts of the Classical University of Lisbon, which he combined with a degree in Linguistics from the Université Paris VIII (Vincennes).

He carried out all his professional activity linked to culture and books, having worked and been part of the management of the Cooperativa Livreira Esteiros, from 1975.

Filipe Guerra also wrote and produced weekly radio programmes about books on the radio, namely for RDP1 and Antena 2, between 1979 and 1982.

At the same time, he collaborated with newspapers and literary magazines, in which he published articles of his own.

From 1986 to 1989, Filipe Guerra worked as a literary translator at Editorial Progresso, in Moscow, the city where he met Nina Guerra, who later settled in Lisbon.

Between 1989 and 1991 he worked as a literary editor and translator at Editorial Caminho and, from 1994 onwards, he began working exclusively on translations from Russian, in collaboration with Nina, translating more than 70 titles together.

Individually, Filipe Guerra has translated from French, Spanish and Italian, totaling more than 40 titles.

In 2002, the duo Filipe and Nina Guerra received an award from the Portuguese Society of Authors and the Portuguese Pen-Clube for their translations of the works of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov, and in 2012 the special prize from the jury of the LER/Booktailors magazine for their literary translations.

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