Os cus de Judas / The Land at the End of the World
Novel , 1979
Dom Quixote
Pages: 224
"Brilliant…harrowing…Packs the impact of an exploding mortar shell." Kai Maristed, Los Angeles Times
Considered to be António Lobo Antunes's masterpiece, The Land at the End of the World recounts the anguished tale of a Portuguese medic haunted by memories of war, who, like the Ancient Mariner, will tell his tale to anyone who listens. In the tradition of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, Lobo Antunes weaves words into an exhilarating tapestry, imbuing his prose with the grace and resonance of poetry. The narrator, freshly returned to Lisbon after his hellish tour of duty in Angola, confesses the traumas of his memory to a nameless lover. Their evening unfolds like a fever dream, as Lobo Antunes leaps deftly back and forth from descriptions of postdictatorship Portugal to the bizarre and brutal world of life on the front line. The result is both tragic and absurd, and belongs among the great war novels of the modern age.