By R. Benedito Ferrão

Once an Assistant State Librarian at Goa’s Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa also served as a Reference Librarian whose specialty was Indo-Portuguese History. Accordingly, the focus of da Costa’s latest book comes as no surprise, its title being Portuguese Colonialism, Food, and Society in Goa: 1900-1961 (Bloomsbury, 2025). Attending to the final decades of Portuguese rule in Goa, da Costa’s book looks closely at rice production in the capital of Estado da Índia.