Good and Evil

A forgotten Portuguese classic of love, guilt, innocence, and moral reckoning - now available in English.

In Good and Evil, Camilo Castelo Branco, one of Portugal's greatest nineteenth-century novelists, weaves a dramatic tale of wounded honor, forbidden love, social judgment, and spiritual redemption. At the center of the novel stands Casimiro Bettancourt, a young man whose passions, misfortunes, and moral trials draw him into a world where appearances deceive, virtue is tested, and the boundary between good and evil is never as simple as society pretends.

With his characteristic intensity, irony, and psychological insight, Camilo portrays a society governed by pride, reputation, family duty, and religious conscience. Around Casimiro move figures of innocence, ambition, maternal devotion, clerical humility, and aristocratic vanity - each revealing a different face of human nature.

First published in the nineteenth century, Good and Evil belongs to the rich tradition of Portuguese Romantic fiction, yet its themes remain strikingly modern: the fragility of reputation, the cruelty of public judgment, the redemptive power of compassion, and the moral ambiguity hidden beneath social respectability.

This edition presents the novel in a carefully prepared English translation, with editorial and translator's notes designed to preserve the literary atmosphere, historical references, and moral complexity of Camilo Castelo Branco's original work.

For readers of classic European literature, Portuguese fiction, Gothic-tinged romance, and morally charged family dramas, Good and Evil offers a powerful rediscovery of one of Portugal's most important literary voices.