The Special Collections Book of the Week this week is:

Die Lusiaden des Camões.

This beautiful book is the German translation of the epic poem, The Lusiads, by the poet Luís Vaz de Camões. The Lusiads is a Portuguese epic poem first published in 1572, and is widely regarded as the most important work of Portuguese literature. The ten cantos of the poem (a total 1,102 stanzas) celebrate the discovery of a sea route to India by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (1469–1524).

Canto V, which is available in our online collections, deals with the meeting between Vasco da Gama and the mythic creature Adamastor, just as da Gama sails around the southern tip of Africa. Also available online is John Purves’s lecture, “Camoens and the epic of Africa”, which was presented at the Transvaal University College (University of Pretoria) about Camões and his epic poem. The lecture later appeared in the journal, The State. For more information about the poem, you can read the lecture here, http://hdl.handle.net/2263/7706.

Die Lusiaden des Camões UPSpace Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2263/12482

This book is available at Special Collections, housed on level 5 of the Merensky 2 Library, and is part of our Old Africana (ZAOUV) Collection.

The Special Collections unit of the Department of Library Services plays a stewardship role in the acquisition and preservation of the Library's rare and valuable information resources, making them accessible to students, staff and researchers, as well as safeguarding them for future generations.