Portugals strahlende Größe

by António Lobo Antunes

The Splendor of Portugal ’s four narrators are members of a once well-to-do family whose plantation was lost in the Angolan War of Independence; the matriarch of this unhappiest of clans and her three adult children speak in a nightmarish, remorseless gush to give us the details of their grotesque family life. Like a character out of Faulkner’s decayed south, the mother clings to the hope thather children will come back, save her from destitution, and restore the family’s imagined former glory. The children, for their part, haven’t seen each other in years, and in their isolation are tormented by feverish memories of Angola. The vitriol and self-hatred of the characters know no bounds, for they are at once victims and culprits, guilty of atrocities committed in the name of colonialism as well as the cruel humiliations and betrayals of their own kin. Antunes again proves that he is the foremost stylist of his generation, a fearless investigator into the worst excesses of the human animal.

Genres: Portugal, Fiction, Portuguese Literature, Africa, Historical Fiction, Romance, Novels

446 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Splendor of Portugal is a hell of a black comedy – extremely black, frightening, atrocious, grotesque, nonlinear, baroque…
The story is told by four narrators: the old mother, who stayed in Angola, and her three grownup children now living in Portugal…
Mother’s life is in ruins and her recollections of the past are outright horrible so to her they are a pure torture…

When I sit down at my dressing table at night to take off my makeup, I ask myself if it’s me or the mirror in the bedroom that has grown old. It must be the mirror: these eyes don’t belong to me anymore, this face isn’t mine, are these wrinkles and blemishes on my skin the traces of old age or just spots where the acid from the tin has corroded the mirror?

Carlos – a bastard mulatto stepson hates everyone and everybody hates him…

letters just like putrid dead animals
sending letters covered in stamps and seals, as dirty as if they’d come on foot all the way from Malanje to Ajuda, the mailman brought them and I kept piling them up in the drawer without reading them, envelopes from the plantation at first and then from Marimba, a little village that doesn’t even show up on maps, mango trees, buildings in ruins, the military barracks crumbling in the rain, my mother living there temporarily, who knows how she managed to eat, in some ramshackle hovel with one or two of the servants who stayed with her, the cook named Maria da Boa Morte

Rui – a sick freak suffering from epilepsy, having an obvious sadistic streak and getting kicks maiming all the living creatures…

“Look it’s that idiot”
if I went out on the street to torment the street vendors and stray mutts, they’d pour water on me with a watering can just because I pulled the folded clothes off their stands or unscrewed the cover plate of their doorbell with a really wonderful screwdriver, those morons who painted the façade of the Dockworkers’ Union building swore they’d kill me if I messed with their tethers or took away their ladders…

Clarisse is an insatiable floozy – libidinous, greedy, rapacious…

I tried again, Luís Felipe, Yes, also in the cackling voice of an old person, impatient, irritated, I’m completely distraught I really need to talk to you, and Luís Felipe, You have the wrong number, he spent months chasing after me with bouquets of flowers, lingerie, rings, invitations to spend the weekend with him in Madrid, promises that he would get a divorce, a four-bedroom place in my name, a car, a boutique, the doorbell rang, one of his employees with a piece of a paper from a little notepad, written with such force that it tore holes in the paper if you dare harass my family you’ll be out in the middle of the street in three seconds…

Foolishness, vices and the pace of history are capable to destroy anyone…

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale with multiple voices, The Splendor of Portugal recounts the end of Portuguese colonialism in Angola. The reader is immersed in revolution and civil war through the life of a family of Portuguese origin.
A mother, a widow, and her three children, Carlos, Clarisse, and Rui, the young son - It is a bit like the story of the impossible family, either treason, deception, or a defect or abnormality.
Each new chapter flashes a character's intimate thoughts and reflections without censorship.
The family's little story is as if projected on a screen, unfolding at very different times in the characters' lives (childhood, youth, adulthood, or the mother's old age) without worrying about chronology.
Time is bursting. From one chapter to another, we transition from 1984 to 1995, and from 1978 to 1980, and each time, we require a moment of reader adaptation to understand who is speaking.
The novel begins on December 24, 1995, and it is Carlos who, in Lisbon, invites his sister, Clarisse, and his brother, Rui, to spend Christmas Eve with him. But his wait will be in vain.
He married Lena, a white woman from the slums (nicknamed the "slum." And this woman, knowing her origins, refuses to have a child with him. She does not want a mixed-race child. It is more stigmatizing to be black than poor in colonial and post-colonial society. The rejection of the other and segregation also have their hierarchy.
Beyond the story of the end of Portuguese colonialism in Angola, the novel illustrates the impossible communication between people. Everyone's monologue does not hear the others; it interprets and transforms through their prism. It is undoubtedly the psychiatrist Antonio Lobo Antunes who speaks here. Each occupies a place from which he perceives things. Similarly, each protagonist expresses his thoughts without following a common thread, as they occur to him. It was a bit like being on the couch of a shrink, where he would let himself go and tell himself without a deliberate plan, without sorting, without judging.
The Splendor of Portugal is a powerful novel that takes on even greater significance as the violence of colonialism, revolution, and war is vividly illustrated through the profound and lasting impact they have on the human psyche.
Therefore, to read both documents from this period in the history of Angola and Portugal, we must begin a historical reflection and individual stories (universal).

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story is set in the mid-1990s when the three children of a family of former Portuguese colonists in Angola were evacuated to Lisbon. The dark tone of the novel is illustrated by their grandmother who called her grandchildren, two boys and a girl, “the mulatto, the epileptic and the whore.”



Under the iron fist of the dictator Salazar, Portugal tried to hang on to its African colonies, Angola and Mozambique, through the mid-1970s, way past the time when other European powers granted independence to former colonies. It’s a novel of the legacy of colonialism – a plantation system in which Africans were still basically slaves.

The kids’ mother stayed behind in Angola to try to save the old plantation. A dangerous decision as the war for independence disintegrated into chaotic violence, terror and random butchery. Angola’s civil war involved multiple factions and outside powers including Cuba, the USSR and South Africa. The violence and social disintegration depicted in this novel parallel those in Mia Couto’s Sleepwalking Land, a novel of Mozambique’s war for independence, Portugal’s other African colony.

The three children, now adults living in Lisbon, try to muddle through their damaged lives as they reminisce about the violence, their self-centered mother and their alcoholic father. Each chapter focuses on a different person. About half of the book is set in modern Lisbon and half is based on memories of their lives and their parents' lives in Angola.



Here are the three main characters in a nutshell: The oldest boy of mixed race, the son from the father’s relationship with an African prostitute, suffers discrimination and racial slurs even from his own family. The daughter is basically a high-class prostitute. The mentally challenged son lives in an institution and inflicts violence on animals whenever he can.

The book is structured as a series of run-on sentences with paragraph structure but not much capitalization and some very deliberate, hypnotic repetition. Some examples of Antunes’ literary skill:

“There are times when I think that my parents bought such a tiny place on purpose in order to force the people who live in it to hate each other…”

“… it has to do with the way sadness settles in, a dead man is just a dead man, but with a dead woman you never know when she’s going to sit down next to you and start a conversation…”



“…thus in a way we were blacks to them [to the Portuguese back in Portugal] the same way that blacks owned other blacks and those blacks owned other blacks still, in descending steps that led all the way down to the depths of misery, cripples, lepers, the slaves of slaves, dogs…”

“…our great misfortune, my father used to explain…was to have been born in God’s old age…a God who was losing his memory of himself and his memory of us, staring at us from a sick man’s easy chair with startled bewilderment…”

The book’s title is taken from the classic Portuguese epic novel of that nation’s ocean explorations and discoveries, The Lusiads by Camoes. But the last thing you will find in this book is any “splendor.”

Powerful stuff with the quality of a classic. I have read two other novels by Antunes and links to my reviews are below:

Act of The Damned

An Explanation of the Birds



With the passing of Jose Saramago, Antunes is my nominee for the next Portuguese Nobel prize winner. Born in 1942, he has written about three dozen novels, most translated into English. He is also a doctor and in the early 1970s worked in military hospitals in Angola.

Top photo of a house covered in bullet holes from the violence in Huambo, Angola, from motherjones.com
Luanda, the capital and largest city, from kayak.com
Map of Angola from maphill.com
The author from ineews.eu

[Tijana]

Kakav je ovo juriš teške konjice i kako pregazi čitaoca i ostavi ga u blatu, izgaženog i rastavljenog na delove.
"Slava Portugalije" je fraza iz portugalske himne a u kontekstu ovog romana najcrnji cinizam: on se bavi i rasapom portugalske vlasti u Angoli i angolskim ratom (u kome je Antuneš učestvovao i to se ovde na mahove baš vidi) ali i licemerjem, rasizmom i okrutnošću kolonijalizma generalno. To je fon knjige i pozadina koja vrišti na nas maltene sa svake strane.
Na toj pozadini je oslikan grupni portret jedne porodice koja na mahove deluje ne kao omaž nego gotovo kao rimejk Kompsonovih iz Buke i besa - s jednom bitnom razlikom, a to je da Fokner gotovo sve zlo rezerviše za Džejsona (nek digne ruku ko ga mrzi najviše od svih Foknerovih likova!) a Antuneš ga deli među svojima još malo pa na ravne časti. I mnogo je štedriji sa opisima krvi&creva u svim varijantama. Ako kažem da u razmaku od pet-šest strana imamo i ilegalni abortus i detaljni opis toga kako divlji psi napadnu, ubiju i raskomadaju nekog, i da je tih pet-šest strana negde standardni nivo užasa i nasilja, možete svakako da procenite koliko želite da se izlažete ovoj knjizi. (Pominjem ta dva događaja ne što se nečim izdvajaju nego što sam tu malo pauzirala s romanom, i ja sam samo čovek.) Međutim. Međutim.
Slava Portugalije može da posluži kao masterklas u pripovedanju:
- toka svesti
- pretapanja različitih pripovedača pri čemu se njihovi glasovi skladno uklapaju ali ih i dalje bez greške razlučujemo
- nepouzdanog pripovedanja od samozavaravanja nadalje, i zapravo potpunog rastakanja ličnosti do totalne demencije/ludila
- ukrštanja više vremenskih tokova u okviru iste rečenice, pasaža, strane
- rečenica koje traju po pasaž i stranu jer zašto da ne
Antuneš je ovde kao pripovedač i stilista na vrhuncu snage, suvereno vlada i raspolaže konstrukcijom i strukturom svojih dugih rečenica i zaokruženih sekvenci (celinom knjige ipak malo manje) i moram da pohvalim oboje prevodilaca koji su se žestoko potrudili i uspeli da prenesu ovo obimno i kompleksno delo tako da je prevod štucnuo eventualno na dva-tri mesta (a npr. pominjani Fokner, siromah, nije bio te sreće kod nas).
E sad, moja zamerka možda pre potiče od moje čitalačke izdržljivosti ili njenog nedostatka - negde oko polovine knjige stvarno se umorite i iscrpite a užasi i ludilo samo nastave da se ređaju sa manje pripovedačkog/kompozicionog opravdanja i pred kraj već izmrcvareno čekate da se užas okonča onako kako ste već dvesta strana naslućivali a na kraju i priželjkivali, samo da se rešite bede zajedno s likovima. "Moglo je ovo i kraće" zvuči kao kuknjava razmaženog deteta ali da, stvarno je moglo.

[Alex.andthebooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wzięła mnie z zaskoczenia i zostawiła z zaciśniętym gardłem.

[João Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

António Lobo Antunes - médico militar em 1972 - Angola

”O Esplendor de Portugal” é o décimo segundo romance do escritor português António Lobo Antunes (n. 1942) publicado originalmente em 1997.
”O Esplendor de Portugal” - abrange um período que decorre entre 24 de Julho de 1978 e 24 de Dezembro de 1995, tempos de profunda mudança, social e política, o pós 25 de Abril de 1974 e o pós-colonialismo português, com a independência das colónias africanas ou das “províncias ultramarinas”; no caso específico, Angola, uma jovem nação dizimada pela guerra civil entre 1975 e 2002, num complexo contexto político pós-independência – é um romance sobre a desagregação de uma família colonial portuguesa com a acção a desenvolver-se entre a zona da Ajuda, o Estoril e a Damaia, em Portugal, e a Baixa do Cassanje, Malanje, em Angola.
António Lobo Antunes subdividiu o romance em três partes com dez capítulos cada uma: na primeira parte, os narradores são Carlos (filho) e Isilda (mãe), na segunda parte, Rui (filho) e Isilda (mãe) e na terceira parte, Clarisse (filha) e Isilda (mãe). A complexidade de ”O Esplendor de Portugal” provém da multiplicidade de narradores e da inclusão de “pensamentos” ou “vozes” que interrompem o fluxo narrativo, quer no tempo, quer no espaço - incluindo o recurso à repetição - há parágrafos inteiros repetidos.
O título ”O Esplendor de Portugal” advém de uma estrofe do Hino português – “o esplendor de Portugal!” – numa narrativa em tom irónico e dramático de António Lobo Antunes, contrariando esse passado de glória num presente decadente.
Isilda é uma angolana branca de origem portuguesa, uma mulher que tem que aprender, desde muito cedo, a lutar contra as adversidades da vida, familiar e laboral, numa fazenda de algodão na Baixa do Cassanje; que envia os seus três filhos para Portugal, fugindo de uma Angola em guerra, no tempo da Guerra Fria, com a URSS, a China e as tropas cubanas a apoiarem o governo do MPLA e os EUA, África do Sul e os mercenários europeus a apoiarem a UNITA; enquanto permanece em Angola com o intuito de preservar e manter a sua fazenda.
A feminidade de Isilda alcança especial relevância, lutando contra a passividade e a obediência normalmente associada à mulher - neste caso, quer pela inércia do marido, quer pela adversidade da guerra civil -, demonstrando a matriarca uma visão complexa e desajustada da realidade no fim do colonialismo português.

Isilda
”(…)
e tinha a certeza de nunca ser velha nem com rugas nem com cabelos grisalhos nem doente e a orquestra tocaria no palco até ao fim dos tempos. Porque sou mulher. Porque sou mulher e me educaram para ser mulher, isto é para entender fingindo que não entendia
(bastava trocar as palavras por uma espécie de distracção divertida)
a fraqueza dos homens e o avesso do mundo, as costuras dos sentimentos, os desgostos cerzidos, as bainhas da alma, me educaram para desculpar as mentiras e o desassossego deles, não aceitar, não ser cega, desculpar conforme desculpei ao meu pai as suas infidelidades ruidosas e ao meu marido a sua indecisão patética, me ensinaram a inteligência de ser frívola com os meus filhos até a viuvez me obrigar a tomar conta deles e da fazenda na mesma impiedade com que tomava conta das criadas, a embarcá-los
- Angola acabou para vocês ouviram bem Angola acabou para vocês
no navio de Lisboa (…)” (Pág. 108)

António Lobo Antunes vai conjugando inúmeras temáticas numa multiplicidade de perspectivas através das vozes dos quatro narradores, acentuando o passado através da escravização e da exploração dos “pretos”, a dependência monetária, através do acerto de contas entre o trabalho e os géneros alimentares; realçando que nem mesmo o facto da raça branca ser sinónimo de status social, existindo diferenciação entre os brancos - os fazendeiros e os que vivem nas cidades angolanas, e os que vivem na metrópole, em Portugal; do alcoolismo, do adultério e da traição; o racismo exacerbado e a complexidade das relações entre “brancos” e “pretos”, dos conturbados tempos de ódio, sofrimento e solidão, da crueldade e do horror subjacente ao período colonial e ao período pós-colonial; da perda de identidade pessoal que ocorre nas várias personagens, incapazes de se adaptarem às mudanças sociais e políticas e, sobretudo, da culpa e do remorso que perpassam nos relacionamentos e nas desavenças familiares.

Isilda
”O meu pai costumava explicar que aquilo que tínhamos vindo procurar em África não era dinheiro nem poder mas pretos sem dinheiro e sem poder algum que nos dessem a ilusão do dinheiro e do poder que de facto ainda que o tivéssemos não tínhamos por não sermos mais que tolerados, aceites com desprezo em Portugal, olhados como olhávamos os bailundos que trabalhavam para nós e portanto de certo modo éramos os pretos dos outros da mesma forma que os pretos possuíam os seus pretos e estes os seus pretos ainda em degraus sucessivos descendo ao fundo da miséria, aleijados, leprosos, escravos de escravos, cães, o meu pai costumava explicar que aquilo que tínhamos vindo procurar em África era transformar a vingança de mandar no que fingíamos ser a dignidade de mandar, (…)” (Pág. 255)

”O Esplendor de Portugal” é um excelente romance, que apresenta uma multiplicidade de leituras, numa narrativa complexa na estrutura e deprimente na temática, num dos períodos mais dramáticos e relevantes da história de Portugal e de Angola.

[withdrawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seem to be on a theme recently. A while back, I wrote a review of Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. The theme there is basically the horror of empire and its need for a 'them' to dominate, to fight, to fear. António Lobo Antunes has presented a similar theme in The Splendor of Portugal.

This is not his only book to deal with this theme but I cannot imagine how he could do it better. Put simply, Lobo Antunes wants his readers to know the absolute horror and misery generated by empire and colonialism.

Whereas Coetzee gives us a short, succinct allegory that teaches us through reference and notion, Lobo Antunes drags us through the blood and the gore. He takes into the depths of hurt created by racism and cruelty, two of humanity's most pervasive creations. Homo sapient be damned. We are Homo crudelis. What other species could come up with such a stupid idea as 'race'?

Here we are in colonial and post-colonial Angola through good times and bad. We have a family with a son, Carlos, who is a 'mulatto' (mestizo, métis, half-breed). Nobody really talks to him about it, just about him. Mostly he thinks he's white but more importantly he's not. He needs to suffer for it.

"It's an embarrassment to the family to keep him here in the house Isilda only God can know how embarrassed I am."

That's his maternal grandmother talking. He is his father's bastard (another of those words) by a 'black' woman. His adoptive mother bought him from her. Oh! Wait. That's wrong. He's his mother's, Iselda's, son. His alcoholic father just goes along with the pretence.

There's another son, Rui, who's epileptic, unable to care for himself, and from early childhood is sadistic. He has a pellet gun with which he torments animals and blacks. I'm not quite sure who his father is.

'"You're not Carlos's father or Rui's either are you Dad?"/ my father because Carlos's father is a black man and Rui's was that policeman from Malanje.'

This is the daughter, Clarisse, speaking who takes after her mother except she gets an abortion.

"I'm your whore aren't I you can admit it I won't get angry your lover out in the workers' quarters you don't have to humor me worry about me act loving toward me when I found that lump in my breast ...." And so on.

But her paternity is in doubt too. I'm just not sure. She pretty well sums up the family.

"I don't know if I like my family. I don't know if I like anyone at all. I don't know if I like myself."

And then we have the servants, blacks of course. There are many, but I shall discuss two: Josélia and Maria da Boa Morte. The two, who despite being abused and unappreciated were willing to sacrifice themselves for their mistress, Iselda, as the civil war closed in on them and took everything they ever had, however little it had been.

Josélia, who saw herself as a member of the family because the old matriarch had been her godmother and had wanted her at her side as she died. Josélia, who is hated by Iselda, the mother, for that fact. Josélia who saves Iselda's life in the jungle as they flee the civil war by giving her own life.

"... she was happy to see Maria da Boa Morte tug at my arm, tugging and tugging at my arm pulling me toward the raft at the second river where the wild dogs couldn't reach us ... while Josélia looked over at us to verify that we'd gotten off the balsa and were heading toward Marimba, hitting the wild dogs with the branch so much that it broke, hitting the wild dogs with her fists, the dogs sizing her up...."

And so Iselda watches the wild dogs tear Josélia apart, never stopping to think of it as an act of sacrifice, only seeing Josélia as a shirker and a slave and a 'black'.


What are these Portuguese people doing in Angola?

"my father used to explain/
since we'd accepted exile in Africa in order to suffer through our obscure penances, punishments, and condemnations feeling less humiliation and less shame than if we were in Portugal, the Portuguese in power in Lisbon hoping that we'd die of a plague in the backlands or that we'd all kill each other like animals, forcing us to make them rich with tariffs and taxes on things that didn't belong to them, the same way we became rich from coffee and cotton that didn't belong to us either, women whose passports were confiscated so they couldn't return to Europe, prisoners of the little huts out on the island [prostitutes] ...."

What is Lobo Antunes message? Simply that colonization dehumanizes. But it is the colonizer who is dehumanized to the greatest extent. The colonized are mistreated. They suffer. But some of them are still capable of human feelings. They maintain their sense of humanity in defending 'family', even if not their own biological family. Even where the colonizer denies their humanity, they can maintain it. In the final analysis, the Europeans are victims of their own inhumanity. They are finally destructive to themselves, destructive to their own kin, destructive to the colonized and, destroyed by the monsters they have created.

I will not go on another rant against the dehumanized horrors of colonialism. We need only look at the violence currently occurring in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen to understand the heritage of Britain, France, Italy, the US and Russia.

António Lobo Antunes has continued to express his own frustration and horror of the heritage he has been given as a citizen of Portugal, as an unwilling participant in a colonial war, and as a medical doctor, a psychiatrist who is in close proximity to continuing human agony which cannot be overcome.

I highly recommend this to anyone wanting to come into touch with their own humanity and the realization as to how thin the veil can be.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con su tono de voz tan peculiar, entre arrogante y soberbio, y su aspecto un tanto descuidado (tal parece que todo en él era actuación), Louis-Ferdinand Céline hablaba durante una entrevista en 1958 filmada en la Vila Maïtou, su residencia en Meudon a las afueras de París, donde vivió recluido los últimos años de su vida, sobre el estilo y lo que llamaba “la pequeña música”, esa manera en que su prosa canta y se desarrolla entre frases francas (venidas del lenguaje hablado) y perfectamente delineadas, que en su conjunto constituyen una de las obras literarias más deslumbrantes del siglo XX. Y es justamente el estilo, esa manera tan singular y peculiar tanto por su frescura como por su hechura, que define también la obra del escritor portugués António Lobo Atunes. Su prosa está dotada de un ritmo constante en el que puntuación y fragmentación juegan un papel capital, así como los diálogos que se desfasan entre líneas. Todo dictado por la mente genial del autor, maquinaria prodigiosa que segmenta una y otra vez el material hasta reducirlo a la molécula genética que le da su verdadero y último sentido (el ADN de toda gran narrativa) y logrando unidad donde a simple vista no la hay.

Esplendor de Portugal es una fascinante novela polifónica, donde el ir y venir de las voces va tejiendo un telar portentoso, dividido en tres grandes partes que constituyen pilares que sostienen la obra entera. En cada parte las fechas van y vienen, y una se mantiene constante: 24 de diciembre de 1995. Es decir, el plan temporal se divide en dos vertientes: una variable y otra invariable. Los saltos temporales intercalados nos llevan a 1978, en un ascenso progresivo bienal (80, 82, 84, 86...) y después anual, hasta que justo en el capítulo final, ambas fechas se encuentran. La dicotomía entre presente y pasado y mas aún, el desfasamiento que lentamente se va acortando, acentúan el aspecto rítmico de una narrativa en constante movimiento. Formalmente, las partes dan voz a cada uno de los cuatro personajes principales, que figuran como narradores, en una trama donde el desamor, los desengaños, la mentira, la soledad y el odio van desenterrando poco a poco los secretos de una familia portuguesa en Angola, durante los últimos años del dominio colonial. Así, lentamente nos vamos adentrando en la vida de tres hermanos y su madre (así como de sus ancestros) y comprendiendo las razones de cada uno por romper los lazos entre ellos, en esa dualidad dolorosa del migrante que vive lejos de su patria. Convencida del peligro que corren en Angola, primero tras la guerra de independencia y luego al estallar la sangrienta guerra civil, su madre envía a Carlos, Rui y Clarisse a Lisboa. Y es Isilda justamente, quien regresa en el tiempo y es una voz constante a lo largo de toda la novela.

Lo verdaderamente sorprendente es la manera en como el autor logra dar coherencia a un discurso cuyo rasgo más característico es la fragmentación. En mi opinión, la rítmica y la repetición van creando en el subconsciente del lector puntos de referencia, que sitúan en un mismo plano los saltos temporales, alcanzando así un discurso equilibrado y deslumbrante a la vez. La oscilación entre las voces aporta un elemento importante, no solo por adherir el punto de vista de cada personaje, sino también por mantenerse en constante transformación: la agilidad narrativa es portadora de una fuerza incesante que la propulsa siempre hacia adelante.

Lobo Antunes ha mencionado la lectura de Mort à crédit de Céline, a los catorce años, como un momento trascendental de su formación literaria. La novela dejó una profunda huella en el futuro escritor portugués, reflejada en la búsqueda de una voz personal en donde poder depositar todo su ingenio narrativo. Esto lo llevó incluso a iniciar un intercambio epistolario con el viejo escritor francés, que se convirtió en su ídolo y modelo a seguir. Esplendor de Portugal es la culminación de esa búsqueda y la confirmación incontestable de haber alcanzado la cima de su arte.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

What we came in search of in Africa wasn't money or power it was
my son Carlos, the oldest, the mulatto
that slut that slut Clarissa
Rui the epileptic boy busy torturing everybody
Maria da Boa Morte (what can one say about Maria of the good death?)
The children and the servant of
You look so pretty Isilda, the matriarch and her drunk husband if it were' for Africa and whiskey I wouldn't live here.

A family. A farm in Angola. A civil war. The outcome.

Gritty, harsh and tough; tender, beautiful and poignant.

His style and poetical language is not a typical book. It was like having four people tell me their sides of the story using memories, voices, images from the past and present, in a poetical almost like a Greek chorus that enhanced the language. It reminds me of Cortázar's Rayuela. Challenging the senses to tell a non linear story. It's about memory or what we perceive as memory. It's about morality or nothing is moral. It's about history, truths, lies and everything in between. It's about a family, holding on to the past; trying to forget the past but all wrapped into what really happened. What really happened! What really. What?

This is my first read of António Lobo Antunes and this book amazed me. No. Mesmerized me. I had those little sayings run through my head. I read entire pages and sometimes had to reread it because I was lost in the beauty of the words. The translation was very good but I am very curious to read in Portuguese.

Without a doubt this is one of the best books I have read, despite the sombre subject matter, in a very long time.

[Nora Barnacle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sve vreme sam imala utisak iz ćoška čujem disanje neke teške psihopatine (tipa, Bardem, u No country).
Antuneš vlada tokom svesti svojih šizofrano pocepanih likova suverenitetom prekaljenog psihijatra, pa mu se može da tu građu parča, prepliće i njome žonglira u svim pravcima i na sve strane, a da čitaočeva pažnja uvek bude tamo gde je on naumio da bude.
Odlično piše u svakom smislu. Najbolji je kad ludilo sipa u dahu (sa većim kapacitetom pluća čak i od Bernharda!).
Ipak, malo se zaneo, pa mi je pao i to na jednostavnostima koje je, čini mi se, mogao da koriguje sasvim prosečno sposoban urednik.
Ocenjujem ga, dakle, u poređenju sa samim sobom - Priručnik za inkvizitore je bolja izvedba.

[Daniele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lo splendore di António Lobo Antunes

Era dai tempi del Faulkner de L'urlo e il furore o di Assalonne, Assalonne! che non leggevo un romanzo così intenso, così carico di pathos, tragedia e disperazione, dove non c'è redenzione ma solo sconfitta nell'animo dei protagonisti.
Lobo Antunes è un genio della scrittura, ti risucchia, ti avvolge, ti schiaffeggia, ti mastica e ti sputa con la sua prosa, con le storie che racconta, porta il lettore ad un livello superiore.
Ad oggi è secondo me il più grande scrittore vivente, degno erede di quel mostro sacro che lo ha ispirato.

scriveva sulla mia toletta dopo aver spazzato via con il dorso della mano le boccette e le spazzole e i tubetti e le scatolette per ingannare l'età , per mentire all'età come mento nelle lettere ai miei figli e racconto del girasole e del riso per non mettere in agitazione loro e me , per fingere che immagino di poter sperare ancora , come se la madre di una persona
( come se la madre di una persona non fosse ) qui da sola senza un uomo che la difenda come mia madre ebbe mio padre e io nessuno o forse ho avuto una bottiglia di whisky e un pigiama con un mucchietto di ossa dentro.

e neppure avevo voglia di discutere , mi sentivo stanca , una debolezza di chi non dorme da secoli , di chi vuole solo non parlare e che nessuno parli , spogliarmi come un vestito , denudarmi di me stessa , distendermi per terra e poter essere una cosa , uno dei setter emise un gemito nel pergolato eccitato da una civetta o un gufo , inquietando i pavoni , posai gli orecchini nella coppetta d'argento e la mia bocca parlò senza che io parlassi
- Non voglio nessun divorzio voglio solo che mi lasci in pace
con una voce che non riconobbi e si confondeva con l'acqua del lago , una voce senza parole o dove le parole galleggiavano senza significato , foglie marce molli sfilacciate

Perché sono donna . Perché sono donna e mi hanno educato per essere donna , cioè per capire facendo finta di non capire
( bastava sostituire alle parole una specie di divertita distrazione )
la debolezza degli uomini e il rovescio del mondo , le cuciture dei sentimenti , i dispiaceri rammendati , gli orli dell'anima , mi hanno educato a giustificare le menzogne e la loro inquietudine , a non accettare , a non essere cieca , a giustificare come giustificai mio padre per le sue chiassose infedeltà e mio marito per la sua patetica indecisione , mi hanno insegnato l'intelligenza di essere frivola con i miei figli finché la vedovanza mi costrinse a occuparmi di loro e della fazenda con la stessa disumanità con cui mi occupavo delle domestiche

ci guardava in un modo che sembrava fossimo noi stessi a guardarci attraverso di lei e non ci piacesse ciò che vedevamo

se mi domandassero se credo in Dio non ho la minima idea di cosa risponderei ma se Dio esiste è bianco e quindi non resta nessun Dio per i negri per cui se fossi negra non crederei in Dio o meglio neanche mi passerebbe per la testa l'idea di un Dio , occupata com'ero con la lebbra la fame il paludismo e roba simile

e quando penso alla giustizia e all'ingiustizia mi rammento di me che da bambina , appena mi ritrovavo una macchia , la lavavo con acqua talmente abbondante e tanto sapone da non sapere più se si trattava ancora della macchia o del mio tentativo di pulirla , quando la macchia e l'acqua insaponata si asciugavano mi accorgevo che erano ancora lì , l'una sull'altra , due aureole che mandavano in bestia mia madre che prendeva la scopa per picchiarmi

[Héctor Genta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il migliore sulla piazza.

Lo splendore del Portogallo rappresenta uno degli apici della bibliografia di Lobo Antunes, una perfetta macchina per catturare il vento della memoria, uno strumento in grado di restituirci la storia di una famiglia di ex coloni portoghesi in Angola attraverso folate di ricordi, immagini, brandelli di dialoghi, riflessioni dei protagonisti.
Materiali difformi, frammenti disarticolati che prendono significato nel corso del racconto e vanno a formare tessere di un mosaico che pian piano prende vita nell'immaginazione del lettore.
Quella di Lobo Antunes è una scrittura avvolgente e lo stile è quello a cui ci ha abituato negli altri romanzi: frasi lunghissime con la maiuscola che apre il paragrafo e il punto che spesso compare solo alla fine, sovrapposizione dei piani temporali, uso di reiterazioni che danno un ritmo quasi ipnotico al racconto, portandolo verso un territorio che sembra quello sospeso tra sonno e veglia, alternanza delle voci narranti che di sovente si sovrappongono anche nello stesso paragrafo lasciando al lettore il compito di identificare chi sta parlando cercando di riconoscerlo dalle sue parole (compito non semplice, considerando che spesso lo scrittore segue due o più tracce contemporaneamente). Aggiungo che spesso nei dialoghi la voce narrante pensa ad altro rispetto a ciò che sta dicendo e a volte nel corso del racconto nascono idee repentine che portano il corso della narrazione in un'altra direzione…
Una prosa respingente? No, piuttosto una prosa difficile, che richiede attenzione ma che la ripaga con gli interessi. Lobo Antunes è stato psichiatra e credo che la sua formazione professionale non sia indifferente allo stile letterario che ha costruito e affinato nel corso degli anni e che sembra ricalcare in chiave letteraria i complessi meccanismi della mente. Tutta la sua ricerca ruota intorno al tema del ricordo, personale ma anche nazionale; la memoria è fatta di immagini che non hanno successione lineare né gradi di importanza ma sono fotografie che si sovrappongono, alcune messe a fuoco perfettamente e altre - la maggior parte - sfuocate, fotografie che ritraggono momenti importanti dell'esistenza ma anche fatti minimi, apparentemente insignificanti, che per ragioni più emotive che logiche hanno lasciato una traccia duratura.
Il passato è il punto di osservazione scelto da Lobo Antunes per parlarci degli uomini, e Lo splendore del Portogallo è un libro duro, pervaso da un costante senso di fatalismo, che tratta dello sfacelo di una famiglia sullo sfondo dello sfacelo dell'impero coloniale portoghese in Africa, un libro sulla mancanza di amore, sul cinismo e sull'avidità.
Il passato è il tempo nel quale le cose sono accadute e il presente è il tempo del ricordo. La riconciliazione che cerca Carlos, il protagonista del libro, con la famiglia e con se stesso è impossibile perché tutto è già successo e ora non rimane più spazio per nulla. Non è possibile riavvolgere il nastro e riscrivere la storia ma solo farla rivivere con la memoria senza comprensione o compassione, forse solo pena.

Heróis do mar, nobre povo,
Nação valente, imortal,
Levantai hoje de novo
O esplendor de Portugal!

(A Portoguesa)

[Jelena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gospode Bože, kakva knjiga!
Nakon četiristo strana gustog nelinearnog toka, bujice riječi, ponavljanja, digresija, svih postupaka koji dovedu do potpunog obuzimanja, bez prekida u čitanju, nisam u stanju da izađem iz tog vrtloga rečenica;
iz mora nesrećnih sudbina, prevara, samoubistava, alkoholizama, promiskuiteta i raznih drugih uspjelih pokušaja traćenja vlastitog života;
u propasti portugalskog kolonijalizma (kakva ironija u naslovu) u kojoj su nestale čitave generacije sa svojim porodičnim naslijeđem i svojim imanjima, nadničarima, svojim rasizmom, melezima, zapaljenim poljima suncokreta, poljima pirinča; pamuk, ukus papaje, sekreter u radnoj sobi, azaleje, šešir kod modiskinje u Malanžeu;
u angolskom ratu za nezavisnost sa svojim vojnim i paravojnim jedinicama, ubistvima i sakaćenjima;
“kad su poubijali naše susede dva imanja severno od našeg, kada je muž ostao da leži na stepenicama…a žena je ostala da leži potrbuške nasred darmara u kuhinji, gola golcata kao što nikad za života nije bila bez ruku, bez jezika, bez grudi, bez kose”…


Karlos, Klarisa, Izilda, Rui, Amadeu, kuvarica zvana Maria da Boa Morte;
“moji unuci kakvi moji unuci nađi mi samo jednu kap moje krvi u njima”
“jedan melez kupljen u Malanžeu koji i nije moj unuk, jedan epileptičar koji se uvija i previja i jedna nesrećnica koja će živeti polugola s ostalim nesrećnicama u barakama na ostrvu i podgrevati šerpe na pesku, rendaće manioku, opsluživaće vojnike”
vazdušna puška, konobarica iz Kotonanga, svetiljke Eštorila trepere iza kišnih kapi;
svaka nesretna porodica nesretna je na svoj način;
“ako bi me pitali da li veruješ u Boga
zumbuli
nemam predstavu šta bih odgovorila”
Finis Laus Deo

[michal k-c · Rating 5 out of 5]

haven't read a novel that's this challenging in awhile (in that it takes awhile to adjust to the actual structure, which is itself internally consistent), fuck it five stars. Nasty book, the only real way to write about a recent colonial scar. the prose always feels structurally unsound, threatening to destabilize with every interruption of dialogue (hard to describe unless you see how this book looks page-to-page), but the parenthetical expressions always stabilize, relegating "novelistic" details to structural afterthought. really good stuff, excited to dig into more Antunes

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know what it is about the Iberian Peninsula but if you want to find a literary powerhouse of contemporary fiction (IE writers who are still breathing and/or have produced monumental work within the past 30 years or so) then you would be hard pressed to find a more fertile region of the globe than Spain or Portugal…From the works of Antonio Lobo Antunes, Jose Saramago, Javier Marias, (arguably) Roberto Bolano, Juan Goytisolo, etcetc it’s a smorgasbord of awesome literary and stylistic insight…Though perhaps I’m lying, I think I know exactly why these two nations have been the home of so many masters of the craft as of late—namely both countries have emerged over the past four decades from the barbarous depths of fascism, the regimes of Franco and Salazar…Which has contributed to a period of cultural introspection and a rapid growth spurt across the arts to make up for so many decades of retardation, akin to what occurred in the 1960s and 70s in Germany. And out of all the writers mentioned its Antunes who deals most bluntly with this calamitous political history and its sociocultural fallout that continues to plague these burgeoning liberal democracies even some forty years later. And The Splendor of Portugal is perhaps Antunes’ most melancholic refutation of both Portuguese colonialism and the dictatorship that enabled it.

But before diving into the work it’s important to suss out some key autobiographical details from Antunes’ life that are irrevocably linked to his writing. Born into a wealthy and prestigious family when he came of age, Antonio’s father forced him against his wishes into medical school, which lead him to be drafted into the Portuguese army as a medic in the country’s surrealistically brutal war in Angola (think Vietnam on steroids). And according to Antunes it’s this war time escapade, combined with his medical work in private practice, where he confronted all manner of human depravity, misery, and death that lead him to become a writer. This extraordinary body of experience makes him (in my mind) the most visceral and emotionally harrowed writer of the bunch. He may not be as stylistically astute as Javier Marias, or as sexy as Bolano, or as philosophically driven as Saramago, but he is above all the most human—the one that cuts closet to the bone. I say all this because The Splendor of Portugal might be the best work of his among the five that I have read so far, and is without a doubt one of the greatest things I’ve devoured this year. It’s a damn near perfect, if monumentally depressing affair.

I feel I need to talk about the book’s style first. Like another novel of his I’ve read Fado Alexandrino, it makes use of polyphony to stitch together its narrative mosaic. There are four narrators, the three children of a once well-to-do colonial family plus their aging matriarch, all of whom cling onto the past amidst the memorial rubble, communicating in a feverish and lyrical torrent of prose that jumps from memory to memory, where the temporal sequencing becomes like a kind of drunken and grotesque ballet, moving forward and backward, with key moments of repetition driving into the reader like a knife, over and over again, etcetc. It reads almost like an immense narrative poem, though thankfully it’s not so diffuse and liberal with its poetic license, IE the narrative is clearly discernable. Whereas in Fado Alexndrino, a book I frankly don’t like and that made me stop reading Antunes for five years, I found it unbearable and incomprehensible…again that is not the case here…if anything the style elevates this book. It’s one of the most powerful and protracted emotional experiences I’ve had with any piece of art in recent memory.

The narrative itself is fairly epic in scope and to recount all of it would take ages, and is kinda beside the point. However it’s safe to say that thematically it borrows heavily from Faulkner, which is definitely not a bad thing. Set over the course several decades, the book details the lineage of a petit bourgeois colonial family, and their lives in Angola, prior, during, and following the colonial war (the one Antunes served in of course)…But more than that the book is about how the past lingers and weighs upon the individual, and in a very literal sense consumes their futures. In Antonio’s world there is no escape from trauma it and only it remains, and it doesn’t cease, you either learn to live with it, or don’t and it consumes you entirely. All four primary narrators are incredibly complex characters within themselves, at one instance you can despise them for their various racists acts or other immoral slights they commit towards one another and everyone around them, yet they are firmly human and our writer treats them as such…We catch glimpses into their childhood dreams, and heartwarming memories, that sit in the same paragraph of barbarous experiences in the civil war. A fun day at the beach inter-spliced with another memory of emasculated corpses. It’s disorientating and just rather fucked…Like Celine, Antunes’ writing moves past horror, into the territory of guttural sadness at the state of human society, and our ontological prison of temporality, and the limits to the human condition.

With all that in mind my one chief criticism of the book, is how the narrators are laid out in the text…Each section is devoted to a back and forth between one child and their mother. So it moves from Carlos (the mulatto step-brother) and the crazy mum…Rui (the younger brother, an autistic and who suffers from seizures) and the crazy mum…and Clarisse (the sister, who sleeps around and engages in mindless hedonism) and the crazy mum…etcetc. Had Antunes threaded the voices together in a more creative and less predictable manner, then the text could be even greater than it is currently. I also found Rui’s section to be the least engaging, and least insightful to his own condition…In short I think his section could’ve been cut entirely and the novel would be stronger for it.

But those two minor criticisms aside, this is a knockout piece of art. I recommend it to everyone, especially those interested in colonial fiction, and a harrowing descent into the human animal that enabled this horrid societal institution.
5/5.

[Apostolis H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ζόρικο βιβλίο, απαιτεί αφοσίωση και περισσότερες από μία αναγνώσεις. Με ένα ξεχωριστώ τρόπο γραφής(καταργεί κάθε σύμβαση της αφήγησης, όπου η κλασική αντίληψη της γραμματικής πάει περίπατο) μέσα στο φαινομενικό χάος υπάρχει μια ομορφιά αρκεί να έχεις την υπομονή να την ανακαλύψεις.

[Milaii · Rating 1 out of 5]

Smutne brzemię pamięci w rozmytej formie. Ta historia niemalże wymyka się z rąk.

Czas, który przechodząc pozostawia po sobie inny krajobraz. Zgliszcza niesmaku i wstydu. Nie da się rozwarstwić wspomnień, jednych zachować, drugich zapomnieć.

Trans obrazów. Równoważniki zdań, rzucanie pojedynczymi hasłami, przeskakiwanie między narracjami, przeskakiwanie między tempem narracji. Alfabet Morsa – długa kreska – trzy krótkie – długa… Na długich można podłapać trochę treści, choć wciąż trudno zrozumieć skąd nadają

Ale największą zagwozdkę miałam z czarną komedią, która pojawia się w opisie. Owszem było przerysowane, było dużo ozdobników, ale nie określiłabym tej książki jako komedia.

Paciorki naszyjnika tańczące w słońcu, kwiaty bawełny mrugające na wietrze, szept słoneczników, nietoperze wzlatujące w niepewność nocy, łodygi ciszy, pantofelki, choineczki, wróbelki, dzwoneczki.
vs
flaki, trupy, prostytutki

Słoneczniki cały czas szepczą w tej powieści. Szepczą, szepczą i usypiają.

[Vítor Leal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fulgurante romance, assente no colonialismo português, no seu declínio, a partir de uma família portuguesa decomposta em diferentes gerações e percepções das reivindicações. Angola em fundo, de Malanje à Baixa do Cassange.
"tínhamos pretos que possuíam os seus pretos e estes os seus pretos ainda em sucessivos degraus que desciam ao fundo da doença e da miséria, aleijados, leprosos, escravos de escravos, cães, os mesmos bichos humildes que apesar dos tiros regressavam sempre"

[Marica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tristi tropici
Scrittura molto particolare che fa pensare alla tessitura di un arazzo, con voce e pensieri della stessa persona - visione della stessa scena da prospettive diverse, da decenni diversi. La ripetizione di parole e immagini rinforza l’idea della tessitura dell’arazzo, le figure in primo piano sono una famiglia di proprietari terrieri nella vegetazione lussureggiante dei tropici, piantagioni di cotone, girasoli, caffè, alberi di mango, palme, aggiungerei anche i banani, non nominati ma hanno belle foglie verdi e morbide, come sedani giganti, aiuole di begonie e azalee. La vita scorre lussuosa e noiosa, si sprofonda nei passatempi e nei vizi, panorama completo, dall’alcolismo alla lussuria.
Quando l’arazzo si definisce meglio, si mette a fuoco una visione infernale da trionfo della morte, dove le eventuali ragioni annegano in una tale orgia di violenza che viene voglia di chiudere gli occhi. Si parla della guerra in Angola, dove interessi economici internazionali contrastanti si traducono in violenza efferata sulla popolazione bianca nera e meticcia che si aggiunge a quella preesistente, fatta di sopraffazione del forte sul debole.
Antunes è uno scrittore di grandissima raffinatezza, scrive in modo avvolgente e ci serve qualcosa di vero e orribile con la sontuosità del velluto di seta, ornato di fili d’oro, contornato di vegetazione germogli boccioli di fiori, cieli lontani. Colpisce anche l’idea dei destini divergenti e non modificabili dei vari personaggi, il grigio ritorno in Portogallo di chi è nato in Angola, la colorata morte in Angola di chi resta.

[Federico Sosa Machó · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ardua y potente novela a través de la cual el autor nos adentra en una historia familiar, y a través de ella, en el declive de la intervención colonial portuguesa en Angola. Hay que comenzar señalando que no es una novela sencilla, ya que el lector en ocasiones está al borde de perderse en un texto que mezcla diferentes voces y diferentes épocas, y no siempre es claro el referente de lo narrado. Sin embargo la prosa avasallante y poética del autor es suficiente estímulo para avanzar en una lectura que va exhibiendo descarnadamente un conjunto de injusticias de todo tipo que hacen de la tierra africana un verdadero infierno de violencia donde diferentes fuerzas pugnan por imponerse. Sobre ese telón de fondo se recorta un mundo familiar más complejo de lo que las simples apariencias hacían suponer, y que va revelando un mundo de hipocresías que atraviesa tanto ese ámbito familiar como el político. Creo que algunas páginas menos hubieran redondeado mejor una novela trabajosa pero que permite un acercamiento imprescindible a la realidad de aquellos que poco o nada tienen, y a la de aquellos que mucho han hecho para que eso ocurra.

[Il Pech · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eccomi, sono tornato, vivo e veneto!

Sai chi scrive come Lobo Antunes? Nessuno.

Lobo scrive immagini vive, poetiche e potenti. E le inanella una dietro l'altra senza perdere un colpo.

Dicono sia difficile da leggere.
Io non direi difficile, direi impegnativo, a causa delle contorsioni che mette nei suoi libri, come i periodi che passano dalla prima alla terza persona all'improvviso, le continue, ossessive ripetizioni, o frasi che dal passato si fanno strada nel presente un pezzetto alla volta spezzando la narrazione.
Dico che non è difficile perché i significati sono chiari e le sensazioni che vuole trasmettere arrivano forti.

Lobo ricorda Faulkner per come mette alla prova il lettore. E come Faulkner ti fa leggere in modo attivo, ti tiene sul pezzo, insomma, fa quel che fa la grande letteratura, quindi se quel che cerchi è intrattenimento, cambia canale.

Ci sono autori che sanno parlarci e coi quali si crea un certo legame. E io a Lobo Antunes ho iniziato a voler bene.
Sono innamorato della sua prosa barocca, luminosa e intrigante.
Perciò oggi non cercherò nemmeno di essere oggettivo, perché sono schierato e te lo dico col cuore:
Lobo Antunes è uno scrittore fenomenale.
Lobo Antunes merita il premio Nobel, altroché CanCan, premi politici, quote rosee o quella pagliacciata con Bob Dylan.
Qualcuno dia il Nobel a quest'uomo prima che crepi e si crei un Philip Roth bis, ché non voglio neanche pensarci.

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 5 out of 5]

A splendid novel dealing with the ugliness of the Portuguese colonial enterprise in Angola.

This is the story family of settler colonialists owning a slave plantation in Angola has fallen from their former glory in the wake of the Angolan War of Independece.

A searing and anguished look into the real 'heart of darkness', the book is an indictment of imperialism and how it super-exploits the people of the peripheries to sustain prosperity of the mother country.

It graphically portrays the way a political and economic order and the dominant social relations it creates dehumanizes the ruled as it makes monsters of the rulers.

Told through streams of consciousness and fragments of memories that poetically jumps back and forth through time, the novel's form mirrors the falling apart of their personal lives, their once wealthy family, along with the colonial society they were accustomed to.

At once dark, ironic, and poetic, the novel gives much-needed insights into the extremely class conscious and racialized psychology of the brutal and hedonistic colonial elites.

[Zin Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, let me confess I read this in English. Even so, it was heavy going. Lobo Antunes clearly does not believe in giving the reader meaning on a plate. Instead, he gives you buelele (a lot) of stream of consciousness, leaving you to work out whose consciousness he is streaming. He has also made heavy use of copy-and-paste, so much so that the continual repetition becomes soporific.
I'd never have believed that such a highly regarded writer could produce a novel set in Angola and Portugal and make it boring. It's long, too.
On the plus side, he does a splendid myth-busting hatchet job on colonialism and its aftermath. The title, of course, is ironic.

[Alberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hacía mucho tiempo que no leía un libro en portugués y he de reconocer que éste fue duro: el lenguaje me resultaba demasiado difícil y no ayudaba nada a aprehender una historia narrada a varias voces con saltos temporales. Y a pesar de la dureza fui entrando en él, empecé a seguir su ritmo y a discernir la trama, a irla redibujando según las distintas voces aportaban datos cruciales que lo cambiaban todo. Y me atrapó esa historia trágica, desencantada, melancólica, brutal.

Como apunte al margen: la persona que me prestó el libro había traducido otro de Lobo Antunes, y a pesar de su dominio del portugués algunos términos se los tuvo que aclarar el propio autor mediante dibujos. Tengo que entendido que la traducción al español es excelente...

[That show will never end · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4/3.5
Dawno mnie żadna książka tak nie wymęczyła.
Bardzo doceniam jej wpływ społeczny, bo wiadomo że była niesamowicie sprawcza. Doceniam również jak autor wypunktował strukturalizm, który rządzi rasizmem i nie wiem czy celowo, ale również skrytykował kapitalizm i jego strukturalizm. Jak wiadomo z rasizmem i klasizmem jest on ściśle powiązany.
Jednakowoż, styl pisania kompletnie nie mój. Był dla mnie zbyt konfundujacy i dystraktujący. Bardzo noblowski za to :'))
Mimo wszystko mam wrażenie, że temat nie został wyczerpany. Że nadal za mało jest tu wątku o faktycznie najniższych klasach tych struktur. Brakowało mi inkluzywnosci.

Absolutnie jej jednak nie odradzam. Myślę, że to będzie historyczny klasyk. I fantastycznie było się dowiedzieć więcej o historii kolonizacji portugalskiej.

[Danielnylinnilsson Nylin Nilsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindblowing. I was almost chocked by reading a book, where such a political subject is turned into such a personal matter. In the end it is easy to say what is wrong, but very hard to say who is guilty... And the criticism of colonialism is fierce - describing it as a system of oppression on all levels, also between those who consider themselves privileged.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my 4th Antunes so I knew what to expect. Interior monologues, a fever dream analysing the legacy of Portugal's colonial involvement and the exploitation of Angola population.
In this case through the voices of a mother and her 3 children, once owners of a cotton plantation and now (after Angolan independence) fallen on hard times.

[Diogo Lopes · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5*

[Bojan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Antonio Lobo Antuneš je veliki pisac. To je uvek upitno reći, ali, sudeći po ovom delu, nemam sumnje da je tako. Naš je problem i problem savremenog sveta uopšte što nismo za njega čuli. Ako sam dobro informisan, van portugalskog i španskog govornog područja, on nije dovoljno poznat. Ipak, na koricama njegovih knjiga se redovno pojavljuje informacija dobijena iz neproverenih izvora kako je on „redovni konkurent za Nobelovu nagradu“.
Antonio, Lobo, mi nije bio poznat pre nego što sam uzeo njegov roman Slava Portugalije u ruke, a još manje mi je bila poznata tema kojom se knjiga bavi. Naime, on piše o postkolonijalnom ratu u Angoli – višedecenijskom sukobu koji je za ovaj deo sveta ostao potpuna nepoznanica. Ovo „tema“ treba shvatiti s velikom rezervom, jer tema knjige nije uvek ono što tekstom dominira. Na primer za ovaj roman se može reći da mu je glavna tema (ne)mogućnost porodice, ili mržnja, ili rasizam… Ali uistinu, tema je sve to. Iz stranice u stranicu, iz poglavlja u poglavlje raste količina mržnje koja vri između članova jedne „klasične“ portugalske kolonijalne porodice čiji su preci, nezadovoljni svojim statusom u domovini u jednom trenutku rešili da napuste rodnu Portugaliju i odu u Afriku, ne zbog novca, nego da bi imali svoje crnce (nekoga ko je ispod njih), koji takođe imaju svoje crnce koji imaju svoje crnce i tako sve do najnižeg oblika života. Angola je Antunešova Joknapatofa. Prateći disperzivne tokove misli različitih aktera, tokove pune slobodnih asocijacije koje vrludaju po različitim vremenima i mestima, više skokove nego tokove, kroz jezik prebogat neočekivanim slikama i proznim refrenima, polako otkrivamo zatrovanost odnosa između majke i oca, oca i dece, majke i dece, majke i njenih roditelja, između braće i sestara i tako dalje, i tako dalje. Ali u osnovi tog porodičnog pakla jeste društveni pakao kolonijalizma, jer, nenametljivo zaključujemo, ne može se imati srećan porodični život u društvu koje je zasnovano na zloupotrebi, rasizmu, nasilju, dehumanizaciji drugog, neslobodi. I tako se preispituje onaj školski aksiom koji kaže da je porodica nukleus društva, te se stvari kopernikanski tumbaju sve do neiskazane tvrdnje da je društvo koje priznaje dostojanstvo svakog svog člana nužan ali ne i dovoljan uslov za iole srećnu porodicu.
Jedna od glavnih junakinja ostaje u Angoli kada domorodačke vojske dolaze u poziciju da se svete kolonijalistima. Krijući se, pada u milost svoje nekadašnje sluškinje (ne, to nisu robovi, bar formalno) koja je jedino kadra da je sakrije, i kroz njihov se odnos u toj promenjenoj poziciji može pratiti skidanje velova malograđanskog fašizma. Junakinju na kraju ubijaju (izvinjavam se za spojler) a ona misli „Srećna sam, jer više ne moram da ih pitam da li me vole“, misleći na porodicu i sve ostale (bele) ljude. I još misli „Ne plašim se da će me ubiti. Plašim se izraza lica s kojim me ubijaju.“.
Čitajte Loba.

[Rude Kadry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironiczna, zakrawająca o czarny humor, karykaturę - "Chwała Portugalii" António Lobo Antunesa to wyraz jego miłości do kraju podana w specyficzny szorstki sposób, co zostało już zapowiedziane we wstępie. Autor jest patriotą, ale nie ślepym na bolączki swego kraju, które przestawia niezwykle obrazowo w swojej powieści. Książka jest czarną komedią, jednak humor, który można w niej odnaleźć, jest wyjątkowo mroczny, wręcz przerażający. Autor w groteskowy sposób ukazuje obraz społeczeństwa portugalskiego, który stoi w ostrym kontraście do tytułowej "chwały".

Książka bardzo obrazowo ukazuje życie w czasach kolonializmu, w czasie ucieczki Portugalczyków z Angoli, w czasie wojny domowej, aż po wczesne lata dziewięćdziesiąte. Wydarzenia ukazane są oczami bohaterów, których monologi przeplatają się, nakładają się na siebie, tworząc swoisty wielogłos, nie kiedy trudny do zrozumienia. Chóralna narracja momentami sprawiała, że miałam problem z odbiorem powieści; to taka książka, przy której potrzebowałam maksimum skupienia, by dostrzec w natłoku myśli bohaterów sens i głębsze znaczenie. Mimo to właśnie dzięki tej strukturze książka oddaje w pełni grozę i brutalność kolonializmu, rewolucji i wojny, pokazując, jak te wydarzenia odciskają się na ludzkiej duszy. Ukazane rozdarcie w rodzinie jest jednocześnie przerażające i fascynujące - i właśnie te dwa słowa idealnie pasują moim zdaniem do opisu tej powieści.

Antunes obnaża prawdziwą twarz kraju, ukazując dramatyczne przemiany społeczne i polityczne oraz ich wpływ na życie zwykłych ludzi. Tematyka rasizmu, przemocy i rodzinnych konfliktów, przepełniona smutkiem i goryczą, tworzy obraz Portugalii dalekiej od heroicznych wyobrażeń. Wyjątkowo urzekł mnie wątek trudnej miłości matki do syna, ich wzajemne pretensje, narastające konflikty oraz późniejsza rozłąka. Dywagacje nad kolorem skóry, uprzedzenia, choroby umysłowe, a pośrodku tego wszystkiego rodzina - najważniejsza, podstawowa grupa społeczna, na której opiera się całe społeczeństwo skrzywdzone przez straszne czasy. Mimo że książka jest trudna w odbiorze, warto ją poznać. To swoisty zbiór myśli i refleksji bohaterów, którzy stanowią karykaturę całego narodu.

"Chwała Portugalii" to powieść szorstka, brutalnie szczera i przepełniona smutkiem, jednak właśnie w tej brutalności i szczerości tkwi jej siła. To nie tylko literatura piękna, ale także głęboka refleksja nad historią i kondycją ludzką, ukazana w surowy sposób. António Lobo Antunes zmusza do zmierzenia się z niewygodną prawdą, zdejmuje klapki z oczu, obnaża nieprawidłowości, a wszystko to w imię miłości do swej ojczyzny. Zachęcam do przeczytania, ale od razu podkreślam - nie jest to powieść nakierowana na dawanie rozrywki, a przeznaczona do głębszych rozmyślań.