The Return of the Caravels

Antonio Lobo Antunes's many novels have established him as "without doubt the greatest Portuguese writer now living, " Le Monde has written. In The Return of the Caravels he delivers a marvelous, unforgettable novel of Portuguese colonials returning from Africa. The Return of the Caravels is set in Lisbon in the 1970s, as Portugal's African colonies are dissolving. In a contemporary rejoinder to Camoes's conquest epic, The Lusiads, Antunes imagines Vasco da Gama and his fellow heroes of Portuguese exploration beached amid the detritus of the empire's collapse. As da Gama begins to reconquer Lisbon by winning it, piece by piece, in fixed 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 rich and uncompromising look at one of Europe's great colonial powers, and how the era of conquest reshaped not just Portugal but the world. "When Antunes is in full heat ... he reads like William Faulkner or Celine...." -- Bill Marx, The Boston Globe