- German Luchterhand
A Última Porta Antes da Noite
Novel , 2018
Dom Quixote
Pages: 456
A journey into the subconscious of five men linked by a criminal pact.
The title A Última Porta Antes da Noite is a reference to the opera Bluebeard’s Castle, by Béla Bartók, and the mystery of the seven doors. Lobo Antunes “opens the doors” into the minds of five characters who’ve planned and committed a crime. A businessman has been murdered and his body dissolved in sulphuric acid to completely eliminate the evidence. In their defence, they all keep repeating “No body, no crime.” In twenty-five chapters (for twenty-five years of jail time), the author takes us on a journey into the intimate worlds of the five accused, accessing their childhood memories and traumas, sketching their personalities, and revealing how the crime occurred.
Inspired by a true story, António Lobo Antunes writes about five voices that are like “human phantasmagorical ruins”.
“A human comedy that reveals what is most grotesque and sensitive.” Livros, Ípsilon, Publico
“António Lobo Antunes has built another novel-cathedral. About memory, suffering, loss, love and all the fragile, almost unspeakable things that escape us or are missing.” José Mario Silva, Expresso
“Antunes, one of the most skilful psychological portraitists writing anywhere…” The New Yorker
“Every new book by Lobo Antunes expands the limits of the novel. ” El País