antonio lobo antunes

Antonio Lobo-Antunes has been in the Nobel lists for some years now. Lobo-Antunes is one of my favorite writers, he has been compared to W. Faulkner because of his fragmented narrative that takes different characters and develop them almost 'til exhaustion. His novels usually take about 500 pages, but he has that rare quality of making the reader feel that s/he is reading, or almost listening, to an oral account of facts and stories, so when you get the pace, the rythm follows smoothly, like a long song, an epic poem. I'm thinking here especially of his death trilogy, where I would highlight 'La muerte de Carlos Gardel'. This is a difficult novel, a novel that demands from the reader some effort, (what Barthes called an 'active reader'), especially at the beginning that seems almost impenetrable. But once you catch the thread, the reading follows smoothly. Lobo-Antunes's novels have been translated into Spanish with great success (Mario Merlino translator, under cutting-edge Publishing House 'Siruela'), but we're still waiting for the english versions of his work.

In other novels, such as 'Manual for the Inquisitors' and 'Portugal's Splendor', the writer

describes Portugal’s colonial wars in Africa, as well as Salazar's dictatorship. Lobo Antunes actually fought the war in Angola and that is a recurrent topic in his novels.

Gossip: he seems to be in constant war with another Portuguese writer: Saramago!