In this position, she spent some decisive years in Angola and Mozambique, during the last period of the Portuguese Colonial War, but most of her teaching career was in Portugal.

Lídia Jorge's first publication, the novel O Dia dos Prodígios [The Day of the Prodigies] (1980), is considered to be a major contribution to the new wave of modern Portuguese literature which followed the end of the Estado Novo regime in 1974.

The two novels which followed, O Cais das Merendas [The Wharf of the Parties’ Remains] (1982) and Notícia da Cidade Silvestre [The Wild Town Remembering] (1984) both won the Lisbon Municipality Literary Prize.

It was, however, with A Costa dos Murmúrios [The Murmuring Coast] (1988), a book that draws upon her experiences in colonial Africa, that the author confirmed her status as one of the leading figures in modern Portuguese literature.

In 2007 Lídia Jorge published the novel Combateremos a Sombra [We Shall Fight the Shadow], which was launched at the Fernando Pessoa Foundation in Lisbon.

In 2020, under the title Em Todos os Sentidos,[4] she gathered the chronicles she had read over the course of a year on Portuguese public radio, Antena 2.

A theatrical adaptation of O Dia dos Prodígios was also performed, directed by Cucha Carvalheiro at Teatro da Trindade in Lisbon.

Her works, in addition to editions in Brazil, have been translated into more than twenty languages, namely English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Italian and Greek, and are the object of study in Portuguese and foreign universities.

[12] The University of Aveiro, on the occasion of its 51st anniversary, on December 18, 2024, awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa to Lídia Jorge, describing the Algarve author as "probably the most international of contemporary Portuguese writers, whose books travel the world, translated into the most diverse languages”.

In 2021, Lídia Jorge was appointed member of the Portuguese Council of State by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa for the period 2021-2026.