Born in the village of São João do Peso, municipailty of Vila de Rei, Castelo Branco district. Many of the memories Cardoso Pires recounts are interesting in regard of the themes of his writing and his style as a novelist.
Although he was born in the provinces, Cardoso Pires was very much a man of Lisbon, the speech patterns and urban spaces of which can be felt in both his novels and short stories. His father was in the merchant navy and his mother was.
Some of his paternal family had emigrated to Massachusetts, and this vague American connection seems to have been one of the early reasons for Cardoso Pires' receptiveness to American literary styles at a time when Portugal looked to France (and to extent Brazilian regionalism of the North East) for its narrative models.
In a documentary produced for Portuguese television, Cardoso Pires describes seeking refuge in cinemas as a youth, and the effect that had on his notion of story-telling. He explains how, after seeing a film, he would have to recount it to his peers at school - a common practice at the time. He also mentions the formative role of cinceclubes, or film societies. The generally left-leaning associations, in Cardoso Pires's words, "contributed to the political and social education of many people" José Cardoso PiresCardoso Pires studied mathematics at the University of Lisbon, where he published his first short narratives, but left school to join the merchant marine, from which he was discharged for disciplinary problems.
After his short stint in the Portuguese Navy, Cardoso Pires started working as a journalist and devoted himself to writing. As an author, he has been perceived as being able to reconcile popularity with critical acclaim. This can be partly explained by his adoption of some of the narrative formulae of detective fiction and his controlled use of the Portuguese language, which Cardoso Pires described as "pared down to the bone, written with the edge of a knife". Cardoso Pires's fiction has often been described as cinematic. This is often a nebulous term, but in Cardoso Pires's case it has been justified by Luso-Brazilian critic Maria Lúcia Lepecki as an attempt to allow the reader to see and hear through words.
He taught Portuguese and Brazilian literature at King's College, London.
In 1995, he suffered a stroke, the experience of which formed the background for his final novel De Profundis, Valsa Lenta. He died of another stroke in 1998.
A Balada de Praia do Cães (1982; Ballad of Dogs’ Beach : Dossier of a Crime, translated by Mary Fitton. New York : Beaufort Books, 1987. ISBN 0-8253-0416-4, 181 p.)
