“We are in the land of snakes.” During the first lockdown, in Lisbon, a young translator keeps a diary. The novel she is translating is also set in Lisbon. Agathe feels she can go out into the street. Escape. On the banks of the Tagus, she remembers Brazil. Brazil, which brought her translation; translation, which opened the doors of Portugal to her; Portugal, which introduced her to humanity; humanity, which reminded her to remember Brazil. Manuela Gonzaga writes in her Secret Gardens of Lisbon: “We are in the land of snakes.” Is she biting her own tail? It’s a vicious cycle. She finally holds her hand. Her diary, which Agathe will only bind at the end of her journey, will guide her through her own inner world, to the resplendent light of a new day. On the Land of Snakes evokes confinement and exile, and freedom and fulfillment, in a game of mirrors that is always destabilizing for the young heroine who seeks not to lose the thread, neither of the story nor of her own story.