Antonio Lobo Antunes

António Lobo Antunes's twenty-fifth novel, Commission of Tears (2011, Comissão das Lágrimas), is set during the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002). Angola attained official independence on 11 November 1975 and, while the stage was set for transition, a combination of ethnic tensions and international pressures rendered Angola's hard-won victory problematic. As with many post-colonial states, Angola was left with both economic...

A profound and genre-defying work of literature about love, death, and illness from one of Portugal’s most celebrated writers Incapacitated after the removal of a malignant tumour, the narrator, António, spends his days in a Lisbon hospital enduring the humiliations of severe illness. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he revisits fragments of his life and the people...

Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water is a novel about the horrors of war and its aftermath from one of Europe’s most brilliant authors. Award-winning author António Lobo Antunes returns to the subject of the Portuguese colonial war in Angola with a vigorous account of atrocity and vengeance. Drawing on his own bitter experience as a soldier stationed for twenty-seven...

A polyphonic novel set over the course of three days, Midnight is Not in Everyone's Reach is a stunning meditation on memory and time from Antonio Lobo Antunes, considered by many to be Portugal's greatest living writer. The year is 2011, and our aging narrator has returned to Alto da Vigia to say goodbye to the house where her family...