Knowledge of Hell

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Publishers Weekly (12/17/2007)
The narrator of this stark and elegantly translated novel is a psychiatrist named António Lobo Antunes, returning from vacation to his loathed job at Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lisbon. Over the course of the trip, the narrators mind ranges over the monstrosities he encountered in the colonial wars in Angola in the 1970s and in his work; through the layering of memories, he draws parallels between the destruction of the war and the questionable care offered to the mentally ill. The novel is both stylistically and emotionally demanding: the point of view shifts back and forth from first- to third-person as the narrative develops in a plotless associative collage, including a hallucinatory episode in which hospital employees gleefully consume the corpse of a soldier. The novel has a heavy autobiographical element and presents a bleak vision of humanity, except in the narrators tender appeals to Joanna, his daughter, to whom much of the novel is addressed. In this early work (first published in Portugal in 1983), Antunes transforms rage into gorgeous, lyrical language. "(Mar.)" Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal (03/01/2008)
Portugal spent much of the 1960s trying to retain control of its African colonies, Angola and Mozambique. An unwilling participant in these campaigns until 1973, Antunes wrote about them in "Fado Alexandrino", first published in 1983 and translated into English in 1990, and in this earlier book, which was first published in 1980. Like Antunes himself, the narrator is a psychiatrist who loathes his discipline's contemporary pretensions. As he returns from a vacation in the Algarve to his institutional work in Lisbon, he engages in a spirited and imaginary dialog with his daughter. So repugnant is psychiatry to him that sometimes he is even nostalgic for the war, because at least in war, things are simple: one tries to stay alive, and there is no time for tricks or perversity. Yet the autopsies he performed outdoors in Angola amid swarms of panicked insects continue to haunt him. Influenced by Faulkner and Céline, Antunes is fond of cryptic similes and metaphors that translator Landers handles masterfully. His search for meaning in an uncaring and venal society is breathtaking and inspiring. Recommended for most libraries.Jack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

ISBN: 1564784363 | EAN: 9781564784360
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press  | Publication Date: March, 2008

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