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2021 Longlist

Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water

Translated from the Portuguese

ABOUT
THE BOOK

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 months in Angola, Lobo Antunes tells the story of a young African boy who is brought to Portugal by one of the soldiers who destroyed the child’s village, and of the boy’s subsequent brutal murder of this adoptive father figure at a ritual pig killing. Deftly framing the events through an assembly of interwoven narratives and perspectives, this is one of Lobo Antunes’s most captivating and experimental books. It is also a timely consideration of the lingering wounds that remain from the conflict between European expansionism and its colonized victims who were forced to accept the norms of a supposedly supposedly superior culture.                                                                                    

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR António
Lobo Antunes

António Lobo Antunes, who has been called “one of Portugal’s pre-eminent writers” by The New York Times, was born in Lisbon in 1942, where he still resides. The son of a physician, he too became a doctor and then spent four years in the Portuguese army during the Angolan war. His fictional “memoir” of that war, South of Nowhere, was internationally praised and followed by other widely translated and much-honored novels, including Act of the DamnedFado AlexandrinoExplanation of the Birds, and The Natural Order of Things.

António Lobo Antunes, who has been called “one of Portugal’s pre-eminent writers” by The New York Times, was born in Lisbon in 1942, where he still resides. The son of a physician, he too became a doctor and then spent four years in the Portuguese army during the Angolan war. His fictional “memoir” of that war, South of Nowhere, was internationally praised and followed by other widely translated and much-honored novels, including Act of the DamnedFado AlexandrinoExplanation of the Birds, and The Natural Order of Things.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

António Lobo Antunes returns to the subject of the Portuguese colonial war in Angola with a vigorous account of atrocity and vengeance. It is a book that returns to the War in a moving way and full of crossroads. It is our nominee this year because we believe that we should never let forget the feelings and stories lived for so many during those years of war. Even if sometimes, for the reader there is a fine line between reality and fiction. Porto Public Libraries, Portugal

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
02/10/2017
Country
Portugal
Original Language
Portuguese
Publisher
Yale University Press
Translator
Jeff Love
Translation
Translated from the Portuguese

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