Snu Abecassis

Snu Abecassis (born Ebba Merete Seidenfaden; 7 October 1940 – 4 December 1980) was a Danish-Portuguese publisher, who founded Publicações Dom Quixote, a publishing house that became famous for publishing left-wing works, associated with ideas contrary to the dictatorship of the Estado Novo.

Snu Abecassis
Born
Ebba Merete Seidenfaden

(1940-10-07)7 October 1940
Copenhagen, Denmark
Died4 December 1980(1980-12-04) (aged 40)
Camarate, Lisbon District, Portugal
Cause of deathAir crash
Citizenship
  • Denmark
  • Portugal
OccupationPublisher
EmployerPublicações Dom Quixote
Spouse
Alberto Vasco Abecassis
​
​
(m. 1961, divorced)​
PartnerFrancisco de Sá Carneiro
Children3
Parent

Biography

Daughter of the Danish journalists Erik Seidenfaden and Jytte Kaastrup-Olsen, Ebbe Merete was born in Copenhagen on 7 October 1940. As a child she was given the nickname Snu, which means "smart" in the Danish language.[1]

In 1961, she married Alberto Vasco Abecassis.[1] She moved to Portugal after a year and the couple's three children were born there.[2] In 1965, under her direction, the publishing house Publicações Dom Quixote was founded in Lisbon.[3] The company published both left-wing literary works and non-fiction, with a focus on those that were challenging to Portuguese political authority, or were as yet unpublished in Portuguese.[4] It was the first to publish Pippi Longstocking and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Portugal,[5] as well as the first to publish The Two Cultures by C P Snow.[6]

Francisco Sá Carneiro was a Portuguese politician with whom Abecassis had an affair. She divorced her husband, but Sá Carneiro was unable to obtain a divorce from his wife. Despite this, they began to live together and also died together on 4 December 1980, in the Camarate air crash, which, in addition to Snu and Sá Carneiro, killed Adelino Amaro da Costa. The three were heading to a rally for the end of António Soares Carneiro's presidential campaign.[7] It has been speculated that the crash was the result of an assassination attempt, but no group was prosecuted.[8]

Cultural legacy

Film and television

The film SNU was released in 2019, directed by Patrícia Sequeira; it was the second most popular national release of the year.[9] Abecassis also featured in the series, 3 Mulheres, first aired on 26 October 2018, which told the story of her life alongside that of Maria Armanda Falcão and Natália Correia.[10]

Literature

In 2011 Cândida Pinto published a biography titled Snu, which was translated into Danish in 2013.[11][1][12] In 2010, the final minute of Abecassis' life was the subject of a play, which premiered at the Casafez theatre in Lisbon.[5] Published in 2003, Abecassis' mother wrote a biography of her daughter six years after her death.[13]

Horticulture

Elizabeth Hera Garton hybridised an orchid and named it Snu after Abecassis.[14]

References
  1. Reinholdt, Merete (18 January 2013). "Hvem var Snu?". Berlingske.dk (in Danish). Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  2. The New Yorker. F-R Publishing Corporation. 1982. p. 79.
  3. O'Neill, Lois Decker (1979). The Women's Book of World Records and Achievements. Anchor Press/Doubleday. p. 487. ISBN 978-0-385-12732-5.
  4. Garcia, José Luís; Lopes, João Teixeira; Martinho, Teresa Duarte; Neves, José Soares; Gomes, Rui Telmo; Borges, Vera (21 May 2020), "Mapping cultural policy in Portugal: From incentives to crisis", Cultural Policy in Ibero-America, Routledge, pp. 13–29, doi:10.4324/9780429295539-2, hdl:10451/25038, ISBN 978-0-429-29553-9, retrieved 23 September 2023
  5. Gliemann, Morten (9 December 2010). "Den danske førstedame i Portugal". Kristeligt Dagblad (in Danish). Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  6. Fiolhais, Carlos (18 June 2016). ""Estranhas mas irmãs": revisitando a questão das duas culturas". Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais. 3 (2). doi:10.21814/rlec.119. ISSN 2183-0886. S2CID 164139937.
  7. "A snumania contada por quem conheceu a paixão nórdica de Sá Carneiro". www.dn.pt (in European Portuguese). 29 December 2019. Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  8. Todd, Cliff (26 May 2022). Explosive: Bringing the World's Deadliest Bombers to Justice. Headline. ISBN 978-1-4722-7897-5.
  9. Liddy, Susan (8 August 2020). Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power. Springer Nature. p. 214. ISBN 978-3-030-39070-9.
  10. s.r.o, RECO. "Snu Abecassis, Natália Correia e Maria Armanda Falcão, três mulheres no tempo dos homens". www.vogue.pt (in Portuguese). Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  11. "Caras | Cândida Pinto escreve livro sobre Snu Abecassis e Sá Carneiro". Caras (in European Portuguese). 23 May 2011. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  12. Lusa (21 March 2013). "Camarate: PS diz que não há nexo de causalidade entre tráfico de armas e queda do avião". PÚBLICO (in Portuguese). Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  13. Salema, Isabel (28 January 2003). "Biografia de Snu Abecassis editada pela primeira vez em Portugal". PÚBLICO (in Portuguese). Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  14. "Morreu a mulher que deu o nome de uma orquídea a Snu Abecassis". Funchal Notícias (in Portuguese). 22 August 2019. Retrieved 20 September 2023.


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