In her narrative, which partly resembles a long poem, Hélia Correia tells the story of a group of refugees who struggle through a desert with the aim and hope of reaching the sea and then Europe. We learn that the group is fleeing from nameless horrors and violence and has only a rough direction, a vague hope of reaching a better place. However, they do not want Europe. On this path of suffering, the women in the group break free from traditional roles and become leaders and fighters, guided by their intuition and no longer willing to submit to men. The desert odyssey is a difficult journey. They will never reach Europe. Hélia Correia, winner of the Prémio Camões, has once again won an important literary award, the Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela from the authors' association APE, for an impressively relevant and simultaneously timelessly poetic novel.