On the tenth anniversary of the return of their battalion from
Mozambique, five men attempt to rekindle the fraternal bond that helped
them survive the colonial war that was Portugal's Vietnam. In turn, they
tell the stories of their lives before, during, and after the revolution
that overthrew the long-lived Salazar dictatorship.
Internationally acclaimed for his fictionalized memoir of the Angolan
war, Antunes has, with Fado Alexandrino, raised a fabulous Lisbon from
the ashes of his four failed but unforgettable protagonists, and in the
process has firmly established his reputation as the century's foremost
novelist in the Portuguese language.
Fado Alexandrino is one of the richest novels to come out of Europe in
recent years. Moreover, it reveals a society and culture still too
little known to the English-speaking world.