Margins
An Explanation of the Birds book cover
An Explanation of the Birds
1981
First Published
4.00
Average Rating
272
Number of Pages
“One of these days I’ll beach right here, devoured by fish like a dead whale,” muses Rui S., portly thirty-three-year-old political historian and hero of the latest dazzling novel by Ant”nio Lobo Antunes. Little do we or Rui S. realize how prophetic his whiny lamentation proves to be until the close of this beautifully realized masterpiece of remembrance. Unable to accept the facts of his life”his mother’s imminent death by cancer; his estrangement from his bourgeois family, especially his industrialist father; and his blunt rejection by his first wife and two children”Rui S. decides to change things. Now married to the nagging, dogmatic Communist Marilia, Rui S. puts together a weak-kneed agenda for he decides to skip yet another dull and pompous academic conference, escape to a resort town north of Lisbon, and there dump his homely wife. Marilia, however, beats him to the punch, announcing that she wants out of the marriage before he can summon the courage to speak. Returning again and again to the only memory he has of being loved”walking with his father as a young boy and listening to him explain the behavior of birds’Rui S. tries in vain to make sense of himself. In An Explanation of the Birds, Lobo Antunes has once again proved himself a master of the surreal, creating both a circus-like dream and a mournful eulogy for the lost ideals of post-revolutionary Lisbon.
Avg Rating
4.00
Number of Ratings
564
5 STARS
35%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
18%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
2%
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Author

Antonio Lobo Antunes
Antonio Lobo Antunes
Author · 41 books

At the age of seven, António Lobo Antunes decided to be a writer but when he was 16, his father sent him to medical school - he is a psychiatrist. During this time he never stopped writing. By the end of his education he had to join the Army, to take part in the war in Angola, from 1970 to 1973. It was there, in a military hospital, that he gained interest for the subjects of death and the other. The Angolan war for independence later became subject to many of his novels. He worked many months in Germany and Belgium. In 1979, Lobo Antunes published his first novel - Memória de Elefante (Elephant's Memory), where he told the story of his separation. Due to the success of his first novel, Lobo Antunes decided to devote his evenings to writing. He has been practicing psychiatry all the time, though, mainly at the outpatient's unit at the Hospital Miguel Bombarda of Lisbon. His style is considered to be very dense, heavily influenced by William Faulkner, James Joyce and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. He has an extensive work, translated into several languages. Among the many awards he has received so far, in 2007 he received the Camões Award, the most prestigious Portuguese literary award.

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