The Return of the Caravels

by António Lobo Antunes, Gregory Rabassa (Translation)

Called "hallucinatory and lyrical" (Publishers Weekly), The Return of the Caravels -- selected as a New York times Summer Reading title -- is a powerful indictment of Portuguese colonialism and another literary tour de force from the pen of Antonio Lobo Antunes, "the greatest living Portuguese writer" (Vogue). It is set in Lisbon as Portugal's African colonies gain their independence in the mid-1970s.

In a contemporary response to Camoes's conquest epic 'The Lusiads', Antunes imagines Vasco da Gama and other heroes of Portuguese explorations beached amid the detritus of the empire's collapse. Or is it the modern colonials -- with their mixed-race heritage and uneasy place in the "fatherland" -- who have somehow ended up in sixteenth-century Lisbon?

As da Gama begins winning back ownership of Lisbon piece by piece in crooked card games, four hundred years of Portuguese history mingle -- the caravels dock next to Iraqi oil tankers, and the slave trade rubs shoulders with the duty-free shops. The Return of the Caravels is a startling and uncompromising look at one of Europe's great colonial powers, and how the era of conquest reshaped not just Portugal but the world.


"... the voice of Nabokov by way of Cortazar, Gogol by way of Dylan." -- Jonathan Levi, Los Angeles Times Book Review "

Antunes has empathy for the contradictions of human feeling. He is a warm-bloodied writer."-- Michael Pye, The New York Times Book Review

"[Antunes] deserves a wide audience of discerning readers." -- Michael Mewshaw, The Washington Post Book World

Genres: Portugal, Fiction, Portuguese Literature, Literature, Romance, Travel, Historical Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

At the age of seven, António Lobo Antunes decided to be a writer but when he was 16, his father sent him to medical school - he is a psychiatrist. During this time he never stopped writing.
By the end of his education he had to join the Army, to take part in the war in Angola, from 1970 to 1973. It was there, in a military hospital, that he gained interest for the subjects of death and the other. The Angolan war for independence later became subject to many of his novels. He worked many months in Germany and Belgium.

In 1979, Lobo Antunes published his first novel - Memória de Elefante (Elephant's Memory), where he told the story of his separation. Due to the success of his first novel, Lobo Antunes decided to devote his evenings to writing. He has been practicing psychiatry all the time, though, mainly at the outpatient's unit at the Hospital Miguel Bombarda of Lisbon.

His style is considered to be very dense, heavily influenced by William Faulkner, James Joyce and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
He has an extensive work, translated into several languages. Among the many awards he has received so far, in 2007 he received the Camões Award, the most prestigious Portuguese literary award.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author tells us a tragedy: Portugal, which in the 15th and 16th centuries was a great nation of discoverers and colonizers before the cruel 20th century sounded the end of the empire. And we saw the colonists return to a country they had forgotten, broken, lost, despised, and sometimes abandoned in a government free of dictatorship but losing its former grandeur forever. History and the present mingle intimately here. Chronologies intersect, and human paintings follow one another in a baroque language, handling the burlesque, cruel features, and zany and grating humor. Lobo Antunes is an excellent handler of images and words. Sometimes, we even wonder if he is not abusing his talent a little.

[withdrawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another devastating book by António Lobo Antunes.

António Lobo Antunes is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. With Return of the Caravels, he has written a novel as an exercise in anachronism, and he has done so in his usual chaotic, life denying/life confirming voice. I am astounded by the very fact that it occurred to Lobo Antunes to even write this book.

I will not try to replay the book. I shall simply lay out some of the themes and characters. There is far too much going on here for me to attempt to do more.

Let us begin with a character named Luís. He is a 'refugee' from one of the collapsed Portuguese colonies in Africa. It is the 1970s and Portuguese colonists and their descendants are escaping the mess they are leaving behind. Luís is bringing with him in the ship his father's corpse in a coffin for burial in Portugal. His father was arbitrarily shot shortly before the voyage.

Upon landing in Lisbon, Luís sits upon his father's coffin on the dock, awaiting the later delivery of his furniture. It never comes. Finally, the dock officials become suspicious and look into to the coffin where they encounter a stinking, unsightly mess. They give Luís a sack to better transport his father and send him on his way to find a cemetery.

While wandering aimlessly looking for an appropriate grave, Luís rests at an outdoor restaurant, his father tucked in beside him. Left alone, he picks up the waiter's pen and pad. He begins to write of his travels, in "eight verse stanzas". And slowly, not too slowly though, just enough to create a small flash, this reader's mind was enlightened. The man, Luís, is none other than Luís de Camões, creator of The Lusiads, Portugal's great 16th century poem of discovery.

And Luis is not alone from Portugal's golden age of exploration. Travelling with him on the ship was a card shark who we soon discover to be Vasco da Gama, great sea captain and explorer. Da Gama quickly sets about trying to win back Portugal one piece at a time from the post-revolutionary socialist government of modern Portugal. Ostensibly, he is doing so to help his friend, Dom Manoel, Portugal's king who sent his sailors out on the oceans to establish the empire. Unfortunately, the two are picked up and incarcerated in an asylum, despite the protests of the King that, "all of this crap belongs to me."

And this is where the brilliance of the book becomes evident. Lobo Antunes has brought together the beginnings and turns of the Portuguese empire. The glorious dreams of the beginning are crossed with the rotting remains as they wash up in modern Portugal. As Lobo Antunes makes clear in most of his books, those dreams of empire could only lead to racism, oppression, corruption and collapse for both those who were colonized and those who did the colonizing.

While we encounter 16th century caravels in Lisbon's harbour side by side with Saudi oil tankers, we meet many other luminaries of the golden age: Fernão Mendes Pintos, Manoel de Sousa Sepúlveda (Indies), and Diogo Cão. My favourite is the early pharmacologist Garcia de Orta, who takes de Camões into his home in exchange for the contents of the sack. Luís's father henceforth becomes fertilizer for de Orta's many plants that he grows for the production of medicines. De Orta also has a wife and many children, as well as living with his ailing father-in-law. Eventually the more aggressive of the plants gobble up the old man and the children while the silent wife wanders off.

The book is both delightful and a lesson in the horrors of history. Portugal was doomed by its own success, its dreams of wealth washed up on its shores as so much flotsam. Beware America.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a degree in Portuguese history or the patience to research on Wikipedia. No big deal really. Buy the book and warm up Google. It is well worth the effort. Brilliant.

[Paula Fialho Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gostei imenso deste livro mas não é um livro que recomendo a todas as pessoas. É pequenino, li-o em menos de 24h mas a escrita é densa e recheada de referências da história e cultura portuguesas.
Gostei imenso de ver as personagens da época gloriosa dos descobrimentos no mundo dos retornados das ex-colónias. Para mim, funcionou muito bem e representou na perfeição a desconstrução do império português.
A escrita, apesar de densa, tem muitas partes humorísticas, sarcásticas até. E isso, agradou-me imenso!

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do reyno de Portugal, no século XVI, partiram as naus do cais de Lixboa, levando homens à descoberta de mundos e glórias. No século XX chegam aviões ao aeroporto de Lixboa trazendo esses mesmos homens, que regressam vencidos de Loanda, da África liberta pela revolução dos cravos.
Pedro Álvares Cabral, Luís de Camões, Diogo Cão, São Francisco Xavier, Manuel de Sousa Sepúlveda, Bartolomeu Dias, D. Manuel, Vasco da Gama, são algumas das dezenas de personagens históricas, transformadas em figuras grotescas, que se cruzem num romance alucinante de situações caricatas e hilariantes.

Lobo Antunes, mestre das palavras, parodia sem pudores, os heróis da nossa história - os conquistadores, retornados sem honra e riquezas, para um país que não os quer, nem lhes reconhece qualquer valor.
Provavelmente Pessoa estava enganado e nem tudo valha a pena, por maior que seja a alma....

Mais do que um romance, As Naus, poderá ser lido como uma grande reflexão sobre a nossa História, os nossos heróis, a emigração...

Um pequeno exemplo para ilustrar o conteúdo desta maravilha:
"Foi então que topámos com um grande aparato militar de castelhanos protegendo uma tenda alumiada de barraca de feira, centenas de estandartes, bandeiras e cozinhas de campanha, cirurgiões que amolavam bisturis e ilusionistas que divertiam a tropa, e uma sentinela nos informou que o rei Filipe se reunira com os seus marechais na rulote do Estado-Maior a combinar a invasão de Portugal, porque D. Sebastião, aquele pateta inútil de sandálias e brinco na orelha, sempre a lamber uma mortalha de haxixe, tinha sido esfaqueado num bairro de droga de Marrocos por roubar a um maricas inglês, chamado Oscar Wilde, um saquinho de liamba."

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is compared to Cortazar, Gogol, Marquez etc. None of those comparison stands, in my opinion. If anything it reminded me Celine. And later i learned that Antunes is aspired by Celine and it shines through this book. The difference is I found Celine too detached. This is much warmer, but with the same sense of atmosphere.

It is surreal and hyperreal at the same time. Imagine all the heroes of the era of great discoveries (15th century) are coming back to Lisbon at the time of unravelling of the Portuguese colonial empire in the 70s of the 20th century. Who are they? The great travellers or the colonial returnees? They end up leaving on the margins of the Portuguese capital which they do not recognise. Vasco da Gama is playing cards and winning the bits of the city with the King of Portugal. Camoes is returning from Africa with his dead father in a casket which he drags around. He starts to write very different "Lustrads". Pedro Alvares Cabral (who was the first from the Europeans discovering Brazil) is loosing his mind and hunting for a job. There others.

The writing is totally hallucinatory. Antunes can start a sentence in the 15th century and finish it in the 20th. He can start it as a third person and finish as a first. The caravels are appeared at the port next to the oil tankers. We follow the characters between Africa and the slums of Lisbon, never totally sure were we are.

One need to like this style to enjoy it. It worked for me wonderfully. Bitter, sad story, marvellously told. It reminds me that the history is never linear as we want it to be.

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I begun reading this novel I had little knowledge of Portuguese history, beyond the fact that it had once been one of the great colonial empires of Europe. I soon realised that I had better educate myself at least as regards the basics since the main theme of the novel is the dissolution of this empire. Following the Carnation Revolution in 1974 Portugal abandoned its colonies in Africa. One effect of this was the return home of more than half a million Portuguese who used to live there. One can only imagine both the economic and social impact on a small and now poor country like Portugal.

And so with the aid of a surreal narrative full of spatial shifts between Lisbon and the colonies, where the present and the past are conflated, we follow Vasco da Gama and the other heroes of Portugal’s age of exploration as they make their undignified way home. A hallucinatory stream of images that are like the splintered fragments of a mirror, builds up an atmosphere of lurid squalor, decomposition and corruption.

In an age where the great colonial empires are no longer revered but rather questioned as to the ethics behind them and the evil they helped bring on other people we find the great heroes reduced to roles we tend to associate with the dregs of society: pimps, paedophiles, drunkards, gamblers and charlatans. Where they so great after all, since they were complicit in the creation of something nowadays regarded as evil? Did the complicity of the real ‘retornados’, with which apparently they were stigmatised, justify the hostile welcome they received on their return to the homeland?

I have deliberately avoided giving examples of images encountered in the novel for all that they were powerful and striking (on occasion even funny). In the absence of a coherent plot I feel that the greatness of this book consists of this gradual building up of an atmosphere and to give anything away would in this case constitute a spoiler. But I would encourage anybody who is not afraid of a difficult post modern voice to give this novel a try. It is well worth the effort.

[Isabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Contrariamente a outros do Lobo Antunes, não consegui sentir qualquer interesse por este livro. Porventura será porque ando cansada e cheia de sono. A narrativa não me fascinou. Achei alguma graça ao misturar de diferentes fases históricas ao longo do livro, mas nada para além disso. Confesso que nas últimas páginas até passei os olhos de maneira desatenta: já estava farta.

Em suma, ou é porque ando cansada; ou não ando numa fase Lobo Antunes; ou simplesmente não gosto do livro.

[Héctor Genta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opera del 1988, Le navi risulta un tassello importante nella bibliografia di Lobo Antunes perché ci permette di tratteggiarne l'evoluzione stilistica. Si tratta di un romanzo nel quale domina il gongorismo ricco di metafore tipico della prima parte della produzione letteraria dello scrittore portoghese, perfetto per descrivere l'atmosfera decadente, di crisi, del periodo post-coloniale. Siamo, per capirci, in una fase che precede di pochi anni la prosa più centrata sulla costruzione della frase che sulla parola, che caratterizza la trilogia di Lisbona (della quale anticipa l'aspetto polifonico), una scrittura che subirà un'ulteriore evoluzione nei romanzi successivi fino a diventare sempre più cerebrale e complessa nel tentativo di avvicinare e riprodurre sulla carta i processi cerebrali del pensiero in opere come Arcipelago dell'insonnia, Sopra i fiumi che vanno, Non è mezzanotte chi vuole.
Pur affrontando le stesse tematiche di In culo al mondo, Le navi riesce a non sentire il peso di quel grande romanzo, concentrandosi su sfumature diverse e permeando le pagine di un'aura di disincanto che spesso si dilata in un sorriso amaro. L'intento dell'autore è infatti quello di fare un seguito de I Luisiadi di Camões ma in chiave caricaturale, con una carnevalizzazione (per citare Bachtin) dei personaggi realizzata dando ai reduci dell'impresa coloniale i nomi di Diogo Cão, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Dom Sebastião… mostri sacri della storia e della cultura lusitana e trasformandoli in personaggi fuori dal tempo, naufraghi nelle loro vite, abitanti di un presente che faticano a riconoscere.
Le navi è uno sberleffo al potere, alle contraddizioni su cui è costruita l'identità nazionale e all'ambizione di quelli partiti alla conquista del mondo sulle Caravelle e poi sulle navi dirette in Angola e ritrovatisi davanti a un fallimento che ha coinvolto i destini di una nazione. Ci parla della sensazione di inevitabilità e di disfacimento che pervade i pensieri di una popolazione che sognava l'impero e la ricchezza e poi si è svegliata straniera in casa propria, superata dal corso degli eventi, cambiata e costretta a sopravvivere in una realtà che non riconosce più.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What century do you think we're living in?"

…the taxi dropped us off beside the Tagus on a strip of sand called Belém, according to what could be read on the nearby train stop with a scale on one side and a urinal on the other, and he caught sight of hundreds of people and teams of oxen that were bringing stone blocks for a huge building, led by squires in scarlet habits, indifferent to the taxis, the vans with American divorcées and Spanish priests and the nearsighted Japanese who were taking pictures of everything, chatting in their sharp-beaked samurai tongue.

This is from the first page of this extraordinary novel. Much later in the book, one character asks another, "What century do you think we're living in?" He might well ask, because in this vision of the port of Lixbon (as it is spelled here), Iraqi oil-tankers tie up next to fifteenth-century caravels, "with admirals in lace cuffs leaning on the rail and seamen up on the masts preparing the sails for the open sea that smelled of nightmare and gardenias."

I have read only one Lobo Antunes book before, his The Land at the End of the World (a sanitized version of its obscene Portuguese title). That was a quasi-autobiographical novel about his posting as a young doctor to Angola in the early 1970s, his witnessing of atrocities committed by his countrymen in a futile attempt to stem the war for independence, and his utter desolation when he returned home. The present novel, written a decade later, is also about the return of disillusioned colonists from Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Goa, following the collapse of Portugal's colonial empire. Lobo Antunes' original title translates simply as "The Ships," but translator Gregory Rabassa's version, "The Return of the Caravels," is brilliant—as is his coruscating response to the mingled color and squalor in the author's writing throughout.

Why? Because it puts its finger on the genius of Lobo Antunes' concept: to treat the return of these degraded twentieth-century colonists as though it were the homecoming of those great explorers of the Age of Discovery who first opened up these countries in the fifteenth century. The aged, disease-ridden expatriates who barter everything for a cheap plane ticket home bear noble names such as Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan. But when they return, they find themselves forced to take rooms in bars and bordellos while earning a few pennies as card-sharps or selling their mulatto wives as whores. Lobo Antunes' writing is dazzling, jumping even in the course of a sentence between centuries, from glitter to pollution, from third- to first-person points of view. It is often funny, as in the description of an effete Portuguese King "knifed in a drug-dealing neighborhood in Morocco for robbing an English fairy named Oscar Wilde of a bag of pot." But make no mistake, this is a novel written in white-hot anger at the colonial assumptions that have soiled an entire nation, and the atrocities that the author has seen at first hand.

Five stars? It's tempting. Lobo Antunes' power of sustaining this surreal nightmare at such intensity for 200-some pages—and to harness it to such a cause—is utterly amazing. I can see why many thought that if a Nobel Prize was to go to a Portuguese writer, it should have been to him, not José Saramago. But as a reading experience, I could not go so high. There is no plot, no characters to whom one can easily relate, no movement towards a conclusion other than the further curdling of contrasts into a pustulent outbreak of baroque boils. Towards the end, I had the curious sensation of reading in a waking dream, where the author's language merged with my own nightmare imagination with no distinction between them. I am glad to have read this masterpiece, certainly. But I am even more glad to have finished.

[Il Pech · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gongorismo barocco del figlio bastardo di Celine cresciuto dalla camereira gordita di Lezama Lima. Lobo Antunes tira pennellate impressioniste ad ogni pagina tipo che hai l'impressione di leggere descrizioni di quadri; Paesaggi in cui diversi esemplari della fauna umana fanno cose e sullo sfondo una trama sfocata che chissenefrega. Quando passa dalla terza alla prima persona a metà di una frase col solo, evidente scopo di darmi fastidio, ci riesce alla grandissima. Cinque alto, Lobo.
Alcune metafore sono gigantesche e si sente la puzza delle cose.
Ma poi sclero tra i troppi elenchi Sostantivo+Aggettivo. Ci si perde, ci si dimentica della trama appena accennata e si sbuffa alzando lo sguardo.
È tutto davvero troppo farcito.
Cerchi di dargli un morso e ti cascano bocconi pettutte parti.

Lobo è un grande scrittore ma questo è un brutto libro. Siamo ad anni luce da In culo al mondo, che è un capolavoro.

[Joe Larkin · Rating 1 out of 5]

In hell this will be read to you in an isolated room with Miley Cyrus as the narrator

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

You would have to know a lot more about Portugal and its colonies than I do to give this novel by António Lobo Antunes the appreciation it deserves. Imagine Lisbon (here called Lixbon) intermingling with the detritus of its former African colonies (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau) and its famous figures from history (Francis Xavier, Diogo Cao, Fernando Pessoa) and forever changed by the experience of colonialism.

The Return of the Caravels is a good title for this postmodernist melange: The explorers' ships have all returned to the banks of the Tagus with strange African diseases. In a rich literary stew, Lobo Antunes wields a giant wooden spoon:

On Sunday mornings, if the sun was shining, the king Dom Manoel would blow his horn out on the street inside an ancient rusty Ford with a convertible top, and the neighbor women, half awake in their nightgowns, would peep out at the monarch with his tinfoil crown on his head and wearing an overblouse with the sleeves rolled up, waving at Vasco da Gama with his scepter, ordering him to come down so they could be on their way along the Marginal to talk about the Orient with a crippled bouncing of springs, enveloped in spirals of dark smoke from the engine.

If it were anyone other than Gregory Rabassa translating the book, I do not think it would have come out anywhere near as well.

This is one of those books you can't stop to look up facts: You have to forge on ahead and see the rich variety of persons, places, and situations that Lobo Antunes throws at you. In the end, you don't know all the details, but the salient facts are more than evident.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antunes once more picks up his favoured theme of Portugal's colonial legacy. This time through the experiences of returning expats and via various characters from Portugal's past. Time and space are deliberately muddled to suitably disorienting effect once more.

[Kicia93 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly a must for anyone who loves Portugal. The soul of Portugal is what the author understands very well, and he renders it very well in this novel where the country's past and present meet and mingle, heroes of Portuguese history - explorers, navigators, kings, writers - return and wander through the streets of modern Lisbon, the threat of Spanish invasion is as present as ever, and ex-colonialists come back to the "realme" from Guinea or Angola, stupefied by the Empire's collapse. This is not only an original idea for a novel, this is truly the essence of modern Portugal, permeated with mythology, whose people like to contemplate the proud historical past and are said to still await the return of king Dom Sebastiao, centuries after he disappeared mysteriously... But the book depicts these myths and these people in an ugly or at least very melancholy way. People are old and ugly, their bodies and minds tired; women are whores or crazy, men are past their prime, sex is everywhere but it is ugly and dirty, the past grandeur of the country is no more. The final image of a crowd of tuberculosis-eaten patients sitting and watching the sea in vain for Dom Sebastiao's return to the kingdom is a very pessimistic though powerful allegory of contemporary Portugal.

Apart from interesting narrative inventions and tricks such as mingling past and present or switching the narration (hence also the perspective) - sometimes in the middle of a sentence - from the 3rd to the 1st person, the book deserves a special mention for its beautiful musical language, for the long, almost hypnotic phrases and sentences that make the reader really dive into the scene; and for the imaginative quality of descriptions that retain attention and somewhat amaze (how about the calm and factual description of the evolution of carnivorous plants in a Lisbon flat, devouring gradually its inhabitants!). So magic mingles with reality just like myths mingle with history.

To nonaficionados of Portugal, however, the book might seem rather opaque and puzzling; it might be too "hermetic". I am not sure this kind of literary "nationalism" appeals to me; it is somewhat stifling, non-universal, and it appears to be a sort of national martyrology. Also for this reason it certainly requires a lot of concentration as it is not easy at the beginning to enter this very peculiar literary universe. But once one is in it, one cannot but be fascinated even if one doesn't like (or understand!) everything.

[Ben Jaques-Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't know if I can say that I liked this book. There are certainly many, many attractive turns of phrase. In fact, most of the book felt like an extended exercise in interesting word choice to made a vision of a wild and mad post-colonial Portugal. His descriptions are fantastic, but if there is a narrative, it is completely hidden beneath so many beautify chosen words.

[Rui · Rating 3 out of 5]

Numa frase digo: sejam bem vindos à puta da loucura. Obrigado, António.

[Paulo Rodrigues · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Naus de
António Lobo Antunes
Publicado em 1988,o escritor traz-nos uma história sobre o regresso a Portugal, dos nossos Heróis dos descobrimentos que depois de todas as conquistas, chegam à capital logo a seguir ao 25 de abril.
Neste livro  estão retradas duas realidades. O Portugal do tempo dos descobrimentos e o país contemporâneo, com o regresso dos retornados de África e tudo o que isso implicou.
António Lobo Antunes procura no passado explicações para a condição atual de Portugal, um país estagnado,confuso e sem perspectivas de futuro.
Com um narrador que vai variando entre a primeira e a terceira pessoa, numa combinação entre passado e presente, de forma bastante original, o escritor usa as personagens históricas de Portugal,
 Luís de Camões, Pedro Álvares Cabral, D. Sebastião,  Diogo Cão, (São) Francisco Xavier, Manoel de Sousa Sepúlveda, Vasco da Gama, entre muitos outros, trocando-lhes o nome e as profissões sendo que algumas delas são hilariantes.
Um olhar crítico ao país, onde usa a  sátira e muito humor para retratar o nosso Portugal.
36 anos depois esta obra continua muito atual .
Leiam vale muito a pena...

[Joel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagino, Lobo Antunes, certo dia, a congeminar uma ideia: "Epá, e se eu pegasse em meia dúzia de personalidades portuguesas da altura dos descobrimentos e as enfiasse neste tempo presente, uma coisa assim ao jeito de retornados à pátria, mas, claro, num estilo altamente depressivo e desordenado?"
A ideia foi boa e tinha (aliás, ainda tem) um potencial tremendo.
Infelizmente, este As Naus é uma leitura penosa e confrangedora, muito longe do melhor que Lobo Antunes tem para oferecer.
Tenho para mim que a ideia nunca passou disso mesmo: uma ideia; o resto resume-se a um caldo desenxabido de obrigações editoriais.
O livro que se contruiu à volta da ideia parece um cartão de bingo com todas as palavras do dicionário português.

[Jim Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antunes makes the reader understand how it must have felt like it for the population, for the returning Portuguese and for the people from the former colonies during this turmoil of change. Antunes' words paint pictures of the mind that are intense and vivid which offers the reader a pleasant read.

[Sara Milligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aaand Antunes does it again. Brutal becomes banal and bureaucratic, the word "casualties" sheds a syllable, and only the zoo of metaphors (of zoos) competes for most-frequented topic over sloshed bodily fluids.

This one's a book that makes you feel your idiotically unimportant Americanness without ever looking your direction. Good stuff.

[Samuel Andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

à espera de um cavalo impossível.

[tiago. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enquanto o moribundo império português dá os seus últimos suspiros, as centúrias de história de Portugal convergem feitas estilhaços na velha Lisboa. Navios de retornados aportam à capital, trazendo velhas figuras de epopeias, e misturam-se na Lisboa do século XX com operários que constroem ainda o já vetusto mosteiro dos Jerónimos. As tágides, velhas e grisalhas, alimentam-se dos esgotos de Chelas; Vasco da Gama passeia pela capital num Ford ferrugento com o velho rei D. Manuel I; e por entre travestis e táxis caminham nas ruas da velha capital Pedro Álvares Cabral e Diogo Cão, buscando propósito num mundo anacrónico. Pareceria como se, vindo o 25 de Abril e independentizadas as colónias, toda a pompa histórica do império lusitano colapsasse no seu centro, Lisboa, a primeira metrópole cosmopolitana do mundo. É, sem dúvida alguma, um conceito brilhante, e (para mal dos meus pecados) nem a posso acusar de estar mal executada: é realmente um livro extraordinário. Indigesto, é certo; a escrita de Lobo Antunes não é facil de digerir - mas ainda assim nada que se compare com esse assustador Sôbolos Rios Que Vão , do qual, confesso, não entendi patavina.

Fiquei, ainda assim, com a sensação que faltava qualquer coisa; é bastante possível que este pot-pourri de referências tenha tanta personalidade que acabe por enterrar o enredo sob o seu peso. Adicionalmente, também não entendi porque razão a narração mudava da terceira para a primeira pessoa sem que mudasse o personagem que se referenciava (Luís de Camões tanto era "ele" como na frase a seguir passava a ser "eu"), o que só contribuía para tornar o livro muito confuso. No geral, achei fantástico, mas, como disse, faltou alguma coisa para mim; só posso esperar que uma releitura venha a mudar esta opinião.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

An original novel that merges the historical past and the fictional near present, providing a picture scape of Portugal’s colonial empire dissolution. There are multiple narrators presenting many descriptions of political, business and sexual events and exploitations.

There is no plot or any character development. The writing alone satisfyingly carried me through this short novel. Some understanding of Portuguese history and its important individuals, (Diogo Cao, Vasco de Game, Prince Henry..), will aid in a reader’s appreciation of this novel. It is not an easy book to fully comprehend on a first reading.

Readers new to Antunes should begin with the excellent, ‘An Explanation of the Birds’ (1991).

This book was first published in Portuguese in 1988.

[Joana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Custa-me imenso admitir mas acho que não percebi nadinha deste livro! Português maravilhoso, recheado de expressões deliciosas, mas se me perguntarem de que fala o livro? Pois não sei... sei que fala de um Diogo Cão, Luís de Camões, e umas outras quantas personagens da nossa história, enquadradas num contexto diferente, que às vezes no remete para o presente outras para o passado... e pouco mais.

[Bernardo Faria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como não amar este escritor!

[Jarkko Tontti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pitkää polveilevaa tajunnanvirtaa kuten Antunesin kirjat yleensä. Hetkittäin oivaltavaa, hetkittäin puuduttavaa. Portugalin historiaa pitää osata jotta kirjasta saisi mitään irti.

[Sebastián Moreno · Rating 1 out of 5]

Insufrible. Reconozco la calidad de la escritura, pero es un libro pesadísimo de leer, apoyado exclusivamente en descripciones. Hace falta mucho conocimiento de la historia portuguesa para poder apreciar la ironía subyacente. (Abandonada por la mitad en abril 2020)

[António Lima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Que maravilha (re) descobrir o escritor António Lobo Antunes dos inícios antes de, digamos, se Loboantunizar aos extremos. Que brilhante história das misérias dos "retornados" que se misturam às glórias e mitos do "Esplendor de Portugal".

[Gonçalo Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entrevista de Isabel Lucas para o jornal Público
António Lobo Antunes: “Quando é que eu fui feliz?”
19 de Outubro de 2018
Isabel Lucas: As Naus (1988)...
António Lobo Antunes:Tenho dúvidas quanto a esse livro. Tem um ar caricatural, um bocado carnavalesco. Passei a instrução primária a fazer bigodes nos retratos dos reis e dos navegadores por quem, no fundo, tenho enorme admiração. Afonso de Albuquerque era um grande escritor. D. Duarte é um escritor espantoso! A minha primeira paixão foi Fernão Lopes. Se tivesse de escolher um escritor em português, escolhia Fernão Lopes. Comecei por ler D. Duarte, porque tem um capítulo espantoso sobre a depressão.

No livro:
"Uma máquina de vender chocolates e cigarros estremecia de febre a um canto, vomitando caramelos após uma complicada digestão de moedas,(...)"

"(...) entravam e saíam nos cretones do palácio do governo, pisando com desdém as lajes do poder."

"(...) e perguntou-me do cimo das condecorações de gordura do casaco,(...)"

[Vanessa Silva · Rating 1 out of 5]

PT: Comecei a ler este livro sem espectativas, porque não conheço o autor. Não posso dizer que tenha gostado da história. Atrevo-me a dizer que é por causa de livros assim que a leitura nacional Portuguesa perde muito o encanto. É uma história confusa, fantasiosa e que só conseguimos entender tudo aquilo no último parágrafo do livro. Mas acredito que a meio os leitores queiram desistir. Sendo que o autor é médico psiquiatra, não me admira que o foco do livro é realmente a insanidade mental.

EN: I started reading this book without any expectations because I do not know the author. I can not say I liked the story. I dare to say that it is because of books like this one, that Portuguese national reading loses the charm, a lot. It is a confusing, fanciful story and we can only understand it, in the last paragraph of the book. But I think half readers want to give up. Since the author is a medical psychiatrist, no wonder the focus of the book is really mental insanity.