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The Return of the Caravels

The Return of the Caravels
  • Author(s): Antonio Lobo Antunes
  • Location(s): Lisbon
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1974

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...

The Slave House

The Slave House
  • Author(s): Charles Lambert
  • Location(s): Portugal
  • Genre(s): Novella
  • Era(s): 1970s

When Simon, a young gay English teacher, goes to work in southern Portugal, he doesn’t expect to find a country in the aftermath of a peaceful revolution, nor to have an affair with Elaine, a female colleague. As both...

Distant Music

Distant Music
  • Author(s): Lee Langley
  • Location(s): London, Madeira
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Romance
  • Era(s): 1420s-2000s

Distant Music comprises four different stories, spanning from the 15th to the 21st centuries. The book starts out in Madeira in 1429, with the backdrop of Portugal as a marine empire, Christopher Columbus features briefly, anti-Semitism is a recurring...

No More Secrets

No More Secrets
  • Author(s): Tricia Maw
  • Location(s): Devon, Portugal
  • Genre(s): Romance
  • Era(s): Modern

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...

The Malady in Madeira

The Malady in Madeira
  • Author(s): Ann Bridge
  • Location(s): Madeira
  • Genre(s): Mystery
  • Era(s): First half of the 20th Century

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...

Night Train to Lisbon

Night Train to Lisbon
  • Author(s): Pascal Mercier
  • Location(s): Lisbon
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

Raimund Gregorius is a Swiss middle-aged teacher of ancient languages in Bern. His routine id disturbed when he has a strange encounter with a Portuguese woman. He learns of the work of Amadeu Prado and is energised into travelling...

The Piano Cemetery

The Piano Cemetery
  • Author(s): Jose Luis Peixoto
  • Location(s): Lisbon
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 20th Century

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...

A Sea of Straw

A Sea of Straw
  • Author(s): Julia Sutton
  • Location(s): Portugal, England
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1960s

Set in the 1960s, the story of Jody, her little daughter Anna and Zé, veers between an unhappy marriage in the North of England and a journey to find love amid the vivid landscapes of Portugal, while exposing the...

Alentejo Blue

Alentejo Blue
  • Author(s): Monica Ali
  • Location(s): Mamarrosa
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

Alentejo Blue is the story of the Portuguese village of Mamarrosa told through the lives of those who live there and those who are passing through – men and women, children and old people, locals, tourists and expatriates. For...

All The Names

All The Names
  • Author(s): José Saramago
  • Location(s): Lisbon
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Senhor José is a lonely civil servant who spends his days labouring in the labyrinthine stacks of Lisbon’s central registry. Among the file-cards for the living and the dead, one – of an apparently ordinary woman – will transform...

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