Thriller set on a private CARIBBEAN ISLAND
Ten Great Books set in Portugal
20th May 2024
Ten Great books set in Portugal. Portugal charms with its sun-kissed beaches, historic castles, and delicious pastries. Explore vibrant Lisbon, hear soulful Fado music, and savour world-famous wines. History whispers from every corner in this enchanting land. Here are ten of our favourite books set in this beautiful country.
Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone – LISBON
You think you know a person…
Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone – no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong.
She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the US embassy, at each confronting questions she can’t fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new husband?
The clock is ticking. Ariel is running out of time. But the one person in the world who can help her is the one person she doesn’t want to ask…
A complex, intelligent, multi-layered thriller, Two Nights in Lisbon is filled with twists, turns, husbands, wives, secrets and lies – and it will linger long after you turn the surprising final page.
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi – LISBON
‘Subtle, skillful, and clear. It’s so clear, in fact, that you can see a very long way down, into the heart of a flawed but valiant human being, into the sickness of a nation, into the depths of political evil. It’s the most impressive novel I’ve read for years, and one of the very few that feels truly necessary’ – Philip Pullman
In the sweltering summer of 1938, with Lisbon in the grip of Portugal’s dictatorship of António Salazar, a journalist is coming to terms with the rise of fascism around him and its insidious impact on his work. Consumed by the passing of his wife and the child he never had, Pereira lives a quiet and lonely existence. One day, the young and charismatic Monteiro Rossi enters his life, changing everything. A man who once shied away from criticizing Portugal’s authoritarian regime finds himself unable to stay quiet any longer, resulting in his political awakening and a devastating act of rebellion.
Tabucchi’s celebrated masterpiece is an ode to courage and solidarity in the face of political oppression.
‘A stunningly good novel, and it goes on getting better in one’s head after one has stopped reading it – it works as an experience – something that has happened to one, which is of course the proof of great writing’ Diana Athill.
Tango in Madeira by Jim Williams – MADEIRA
A disillusioned soldier looks for love. An exiled Emperor fears assassination. Agatha Christie takes a holiday. And George Bernard Shaw learns to tango. In the aftermath of World War I, Michael Pinfold a disillusioned ex-soldier tries to rescue his failing family wine business on the island of Madeira. In a villa in the hills the exiled Austrian Emperor lives in fear of assassination by Hungarian killers, while in Reid’s Hotel, a well-known lady crime novelist is stranded on her way to South Africa and George Bernard Shaw whiles away his days corresponding with his friends, writing a one act play and learning to tango with the hotel manager’s spouse. A stranger, Robinson, is found murdered and Michael finds himself manipulated into investigating the crime by his sinister best friend, Johnny Cardozo, the local police chief, with whose wife he is pursuing an arid love affair: manipulated, too, by Father Flaherty, a priest with dubious political interests, and by his own eccentric parent, who claims to have been part of a comedy duo that once entertained the Kaiser with Jewish jokes. Will Michael find love? Will the Emperor escape his would-be killers? Will any of the characters learn the true meaning of the tango?
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel – PORTUGAL
In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the location of an extraordinary artefact that – if it exists – would redefine history. Travelling in one of Europe’s earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this treasure. Some thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist finds himself at the centre of a murder mystery.
Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he comes to his ancestral village with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee.
Three stories. Three broken hearts. One exploration: what is a life without stories?
The High Mountains of Portugal takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century – and through the human soul.
The Return of the Caravels by Antonio Lobo Antunes – LISBON
The Return of the Caravels is a powerful indictment of Portuguese colonialism and another literary tour de force from the pen of Antonio Lobo Antunes, “the greatest living Portuguese writer” (Vogue). It is set in Lisbon as Portugal’s African colonies gain their independence in the mid-1970s. In a contemporary response to Camoes’s conquest epic The Lusiads, Antunes imagines Vasco da Gama and other heroes of Portuguese explorations beached amid the detritus of the empire’s collapse. Or is it the modern colonials — with their mixed-race heritage and uneasy place in the “fatherland” — who have somehow ended up in sixteenth-century Lisbon? As da Gama begins winning back ownership of Lisbon piece by piece in crooked 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 startling and uncompromising look at one of Europe’s great colonial powers, and how the era of conquest reshaped not just Portugal but the world.
No More Secrets by Tricia Maw – PORTUGAL
When Charlotte Pascoe returns to Devon to work with her father in the family boatyard, she is horrified to discover that he is about to sell the site to Raphael da Silva, a property developer.
Unable to pursue her dream, Charlotte agrees to work for Raphael, but although she is attracted to him she is unable to become close because of his role in destroying her home. She soon discovers secrets in his past life which he refuses to talk about.
The Malady in Madeira by Ann Bridge – MADEIRA
The last thing recently widowed Julia Probyn expects to find on the lush and charming island of Madeira is a clue to her husband’s mysterious death, for Colonel Jamieson perished somewhere in the wilds of Central Asia while on a top-secret mission for British Intelligence. No sooner does Julia arrive at Madeira with her infant son and his devoted Nanny, however, than a series of strange, sinister, but apparently unconnected events begins thrusting itself upon her.
Displaying her usual intuitive flair for deduction, Julia soon concludes that, for some reason, the Russians are experimenting with a powerful new chemical on Madeira’s wild sheep. But why? And why was she told that her husband died “because he went out without wearing his respirator”?
A small Madeiran peasant boy shows the same lethargic symptoms as the sheep, and-Julia suddenly realizes-as her husband had himself displayed shortly before walking into a Soviet ambush half a world away. Has she stumbled upon a testing ground for nerve gas in Madeira? And is that what her husband’s last mission was all about? Keeping a firm grip on her nerves and her imagination, Julia forces herself to learn the exact and painful details surrounding the abortive mission and her husband’s death.
Once in possession of the few tenuous facts that anyone in London knows and can tell about Colonel Jamieson’s death, Julia summons her cousin, Colin Monro, to Madeira and, together, they blow the entire Russian plot wide open. Here is high adventure interwoven with all the sights, sounds and scenes of fecund Madeira in a story as exotic and spellbinding as Ann Bridge’s many readers have come to expect from her gifted pen.
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier – LISBON
Night Train to Lisbon follows Raimund Gregorius, a 57-year-old Classics scholar, on a journey that takes him across Europe. Abandoning his job and his life and travelling with a dusty old book as his talisman, he heads for Lisbon in search of clues to the life of the book’s Portuguese author, Amadeu de Prado. As he gets swept up in his quest, he finds that the journey is also one of self-discovery, as he reencounters all the decisions he has made – and not made – in his life, and faces the roads not travelled.
The Piano Cemetery by José Luis Peixoto – LISBON
The Lazaro family are carpenters who would rather be piano-makers. In the dusty back room of their carpentry shop in Lisbon is the ‘piano cemetery’, filled with broken-down pianos that provide the spare parts needed for repairing and rebuilding instruments all over the city. It is a mysterious and magical place, a place of solace, a dreaming place and, above all, a trysting place for lovers. Peixoto weaves the tragic true story of the marathon-runner, Francisco Lazaro, into a rich narrative of love, betrayal, domestic happiness and dashed hopes.
300 Days of Sun by Deborah Lawrenson – FARO, LISBON, THE ALGARVE
Combining the atmosphere of Jess Walters Beautiful Ruins with the intriguing historical backstory of Christina Baker Kline s The Orphan Train, Deborah Lawrenson s mesmerizing novel transports readers to a sunny Portuguese town with a shadowy past where two women, decades apart, are drawn into a dark game of truth and lies that still haunts the shifting sea marshes.
Traveling to Faro, Portugal, journalist Joanna Millard hopes to escape an unsatisfying relationship and a stalled career. Faro is an enchanting town, and the seaside views are enhanced by the company of Nathan Emberlin, a charismatic younger man. But behind the crumbling facades of Moorish buildings, Joanna soon realizes, Faro has a seedy underbelly, its economy compromised by corruption and wartime spoils. And Nathan has an ulterior motive for seeking her company: he is determined to discover the truth involving a child s kidnapping that may have taken place on this dramatic coastline over two decades ago.
Joanna s subsequent search leads her to Ian Rylands, an English expat who cryptically insists she will find answers in The Alliance, a novel written by American Esta Hartford. The book recounts an American couple s experience in Portugal during World War II, and their entanglements both personal and professional with their German enemies. Only Rylands insists the book isn t fiction, and as Joanna reads deeper into The Alliance, she begins to suspect that Esta Hartford s story and Nathan Emberlin s may indeed converge in Faro where the past not only casts a long shadow but still exerts a very present danger.
Enjoy your books set in Portugal…
Tony for the TripFiction team
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I loved Night Train to Lisbon. It was also a film.