Antonio Lobo Antunes Libros

Entre las doce de la noche y las cinco de la mañana, no duerme nadie. Estas personas sueñan despiertas durante el tiempo del sueño: cuentan e inventan sus vidas y sus historias, o las historias en que se transforman sus vidas, o las vidas que se transforman en historias. Pueden ser historias crueles, de miedo, de una cicatriz interior, de algo que tal vez fuese el Estado portugués de otros tiempos. Pueden ser historias de amores pasados, de lápidas que alguien barre, del deseo de toda una vida, de poder ser feliz sin pensar en serlo. En estas historias, en los silencios de estos discursos, en las risas y en las traiciones, vamos identificando la noche de un país, la noche llena de voces de todos nosotros, y la noche silenciosa que es el aislamiento de cada uno.

Memoria de elefante , primera novela de António Lobo Antunes, es el retrato de una crisis existencial. El protagonista, un psiquiatra residente en Lisboa cuya verdadera vocación es la escritura, cuenta, a través de una voz exuberante, facetas y capítulos de su vida, haciendo hincapié en los aspectos más íntimos y comprometidos. A lo largo de un día y una noche el héroe y narrador de esta historia pone de manifiesto la voluntad de escucharse a sí mismo, y de este modo hallar definitivamente una identidad perdida tiempo atrás. Memoria de elefante anuncia la llegada de un autor que destaca por la originalidad en su forma de contar, y lo que es aún más un escritor que provoca en el lector una forma insólita de leer. La crítica ha «Una novela que alcanza un nivel e intensidad admirables, que se impone con una convicción en el análisis del alma humana que envidiarían Camus o Dostoievski.» Francisco Solano, Babelia, El País «António Lobo Antunes es un privilegio insólito en el panorama de la literatura mundial. Sus libros son auténticos milagros que consiguen hacer auténtica poesía de las materias más comunes, que logran contar lo que no es contable, atrapar la memoria como pequeñas pulsiones emocionales.» Ignacio Echevarría « Memoria de elefante es un modelo perfecto de opera prima por su ambición y su deseo de lucimiento, y sobre todo es un aviso del talento que llegaría después.» Javier Aparicio Maydeu, Letras Libres

Like a Portuguese version of As I Lay Dying, but more ambitious, António Lobo Antunes''s eleventh novel chronicles the decadence not just of a family but of an entire society - a society morally and spiritually vitiated by four decades of totalitarian rule. In this his masterful novel, António Lobo Antunes, "one of the most skillful psychological portraitists writing anywhere, renders the turpitude of an entire society through an impasto of intensely individual voices." (The New Yorker) The protagonist and anti-hero Senhor Francisco, a powerful state minister and personal friend of Salazar, expects to be named prime minister when Salazar is incapacitated by a stroke in 1968. Outraged that the President (Admiral Américo Tomás) appoints not him but Marcelo Caetano to the post, Senhor Francisco retreats to his farm in Setúbal, where he vaguely plots a coup with other ex-ministers and aged army officers who feel they''ve been snubbed or forgotten. But it''s younger army officers who in 1974 pull off a coup, the Revolution of the Flowers (so called since no shots were fired, carnations sticking out of the butts of the insurgents'' rifles), ending 42 years of dictatorship. Senhor Francisco, more paranoid than ever, accuses all the workers at his farm of being communists and sends them away with a brandished shotgun, remaining all alone - a large but empty shadow of his once seeming omnipotence - to defend a decrepit farm from the figments of his imagination. When the novel opens, Senhor Francisco is no longer at the farm but in a nursing home in Lisbon with a bedpan between his legs, having suffered a stroke that left him largely paralyzed. No longer able to speak, he mentally reviews his life and loves. His loves? In fact the only woman he really loved was his wife Isabel, who left him early on, when their son João was just a tiny boy. Francisco takes up with assorted women and takes sexual advantage of the young maids on the farm, the steward''s teenage daughter, and his secretaries at the Ministry, but he can never get over the humiliation of Isabel having jilted him for another man. Many years later he spots a commonplace shop girl, named Milá, who resembles his ex-wife. He sets the girl and her mother up in a fancy apartment, makes her wear Isabel''s old clothes, and introduces her to Salazar and other government officials as his wife, and everyone goes along with the ludicrous sham, because everything about Salazar''s Estado Novo ("New State") was sham - from the rickety colonial "empire" in Africa to the emasculate political leaders in the home country, themselves monitored and controlled by the secret police. Once the system of shams tumbles like a castle of cards, Francisco''s cuckoldry glares at him with even greater scorn than before, and all around him lie casualties. Milá and her mother return to their grubby notions shop more hopeless than ever, because the mother is dying and Milá is suddenly a spinster without prospects. The steward, with no more farm to manage, moves his family into a squalid apartment and gets a job at a squalid factory. The minister''s son, raised by the housekeeper, grows up to be good-hearted but totally inept, so that his ruthless in-laws easily defraud him of his father''s farm, which they turn into a tourist resort. The minister''s daughter, Paula, whom he had by the cook and who was raised by a childless widow in another town, is ostracized after the Revolution because of who her father was, even though she hardly ever knew him. Isabel, the ex-wife, also ends up all alone, in a crummy kitchenette in Lisbon, but she isn''t a casualty of Senhor Francisco or of society or of a political regime but of love, of its near impossibility. Disillusioned by all the relationships she had with men, she stoutly resists Francisco''s ardent attempts to win her back, preferring solitude instead. We have to go to the housekeeper, Titina, this novel''s most compelling character, to find hope of salvation, however unlikely a source she seems. Unattractive and uneducated, Titina never had a romantic love relationship, though she secretly loved her boss, who never suspected. She ends up, like him, in an old folks'' home, and like him she spends her days looking back and dreaming of returning to the farm in its heyday. Old age is a great equalizer. And yet the two characters are not equal. Titina retains her innocence. But it''s not the innocence of helpless inability - the case of João, Francisco''s son - nor is it the pathetic innocence of Romeu, the emotionally and mentally undeveloped co-worker by whom Paula has a son. Titina isn''t helpless or ingenuous, and she isn''t immune to the less than flattering human feelings of jealousy, impatience and anger. But she never succumbs to baser instincts. She knows her worth and cultivates it. She is a proud woman, but proud only of what she really is and what she has really accomplished in life. At one level (and it operates at many), The Inquisitorssssss'' Manual is an inquiry into the difficult coexistence of self-affirmation and tenderness toward others. Their correct balance, which equals human dignity, occurs in the housekeeper.

"Originally published in Portuguese by Publicaðcâoes Dom Quixote as Exortaðcäao aos Crocodilos in 1999" -- Title page verso.

The winner of the Portuguese Writers' Association Grand Prize for Fiction presents a febrile, funny, sometimes shocking story, about the greedy son-in-law of an ailing Portuguese tycoon and his efforts to steal the family fortune.

Set against the backdrop of the Angolan Civil War, this novel explores the complexities of post-colonial Angola following its independence in 1975. It delves into the ethnic tensions and international pressures that complicate the nation’s transition, highlighting the power struggles among three main liberation movements. The narrative intricately weaves the historical context of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), its roots, and its connections to broader geopolitical influences, reflecting on the socio-economic challenges faced by the country.

In diesen kurzen, ursprünglich für eine portugiesische Tageszeitung geschriebenen Geschichten zeigt sich Lobo Antunes, der in seinen Romanen die Abgründe der menschlichen Seele erforscht, von seiner sonnigen Seite. Heitere Episoden aus der Kindheit, Spazi

In einem Elendsviertel von Lissabon treffen eine Jugendgang, bestehend aus Schwarzen, Farbigen und Osteuropäern, auf die Polizei, die mit der Situation überfordert ist, sowie auf die leidenden Bewohner. Der Autor fängt die sozialen Verwerfungen der globalisierten Moderne ein und verleiht den Menschen am Rande der Gesellschaft starke Stimmen. Ein kurz vor der Pensionierung stehender Polizist verfasst einen Bericht über die kriminellen Taten der Gang, während er sich an seine eigene Kindheit, seine gescheiterte Ehe und seine entfernt lebende Tochter erinnert. Allmählich kommen auch andere Stimmen aus dem Viertel zu Wort, die unter den polizeilichen Maßnahmen ebenso leiden wie unter den Übergriffen der Gang, die Tankstellen und Supermärkte überfallen und Drogen handeln. Die Mitglieder der Gang selbst äußern sich ebenfalls. Leser erleben hautnah die Wut und Verzweiflung von Menschen, die im Schatten der Gesellschaft leben, deren Leben von Konflikten zwischen Mann und Frau, Reich und Arm, Schwarz und Weiß geprägt ist. Der Autor thematisiert Migration, Entfremdung und den Zusammenprall verschiedener Kulturen und findet eindringliche, poetische Stimmen für die Zukurzgekommenen, die überall durch das Raster fallen, nicht nur in Portugal.