The Boston Athenaeum presents a talk with António Lobo Antunes, in conjunction with the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the General Consulate of Portugal, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities
BOOK TALK: Antonio Lobo Antunes
Thursday, Sept. 25, 6 p.m.
The Boston Athenaeum 10 Â 1/2 Beacon Street
Presented in collaboration with the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at UMass Dartmouth, the General Consulate of Portugal, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities
The razor-thin line between reality and madness is transgressed in António Lobo Antunes’s first novel to appear in English in five years, What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire?, set in the steamy world of Lisbon’s demimonde. Psychologically penetrating, pregnant with literary symbolism, and deeply sympathetic in its depiction of society’s dregs, Lobo Antunes’s novel ventriloquizes the voices of the damned in a work that recalls Joyce’s Ulysses with a dizzying farrago of urban images few readers will forget. What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire? was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa, who will join him for this book talk.
Antonio Lobo Antunes is the author of sixteen novels, including Act of the Damned and
The Natural Order of Things. In 2003, he was the subject of an international colloquium, Facts and Fictions of António Lobo Antunes, at the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and will be the focus of the Center’s September 2008 issue of the journal Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies. He lives in Lisbon.
Tickets: $15, $10 for members. A reception and book signing will follow the talk. Reservations required at (617) 720-7600.
