The Inquisitors' Manual

By António Lobo Antunes

Book Overview

Like a Portuguese version of As I Lay Dying, but more ambitious, Ant oacute;nio Lobo Antunes's eleventh novel chronicles the decadence not just of a family but of an entire society - a society morally and spiritually vitiated by four decades of totalitarian rule. In this his masterful novel, Ant nio Lobo Antunes, "one of the most skillful psychological portraitists writing anywhere, renders the turpitude of an entire society through an impasto of intensely individual voices." (The New Yorker)

The protagonist and anti-hero Senhor Francisco, a powerful state minister and personal friend of Salazar, expects to be named prime minister when Salazar is incapacitated by a stroke in 1968. Outraged that the President (Admiral Am eacute;rico Tom aacute;s) appoints not him but Marcelo Caetano to the post, Senhor Francisco retreats to his farm in Set uacute;bal, where he vaguely plots a coup with other ex-ministers and aged army officers who feel they've been snubbed or forgotten. But it's younger army officers who in 1974 pull off a coup, the Revolution of the Flowers (so called since no shots were fired, carnations sticking out of the butts of the insurgents' rifles), ending 42 years of dictatorship. Senhor Francisco, more paranoid than ever, accuses all the workers at his farm of being communists and sends them away with a brandished shotgun, remaining all alone - a large but empty shadow of his once seeming omnipotence - to defend a decrepit farm from the figments of his imagination.

When the novel opens, Senhor Francisco is no longer at the farm but in a nursing home in Lisbon with a bedpan between his legs, having suffered a stroke that left him largely paralyzed. No longer able to speak, he mentally reviews his life and loves. His loves? In fact the only woman he really loved was his wife Isabel, who left him early on, when their son Jo o was just a tiny boy. Francisco takes up with assorted women and takes sexual advantage of the young maids on the farm, the steward's teenage daughter, and his secretaries at the Ministry, but he can never get over the humiliation of Isabel having jilted him for another man. Many years later he spots a commonplace shop girl, named Mil , who resembles his ex-wife. He sets the girl and her mother up in a fancy apartment, makes her wear Isabel's old clothes, and introduces her to Salazar and other government officials as his wife, and everyone goes along with the ludicrous sham, because everything about Salazar's Estado Novo ("New State") was sham - from the rickety colonial "empire" in Africa to the emasculate political leaders in the home country, themselves monitored and controlled by the secret police.

Once the system of shams tumbles like a castle of cards, Francisco's cuckoldry glares at him with even greater scorn than before, and all around him lie casualties. Mil and her mother return to their grubby notions shop more hopeless than ever, because the mother is dying and Mil is suddenly a spinster without prospects. The steward, with no more farm to manage, moves his family into a squalid apartment and gets a job at a squalid factory. The minister's son, raised by the housekeeper, grows up to be good-hearted but totally inept, so that his ruthless in-laws easily defraud him of his father's farm, which they turn into a tourist resort. The minister's daughter, Paula, whom he had by the cook and who was raised by a childless widow in another town, is ostracized after the Revolution because of who her father was, even though she hardly ever knew him.

Isabel, the ex-wife, also ends up all alone, in a crummy kitchenette in Lisbon, but she isn't a casualty of Senhor Francisco or of society or of a political regime but of love, of its near impossibility. Disillusioned by all the relationships she had with men, she stoutly resists Francisco's ardent attempts to win her back, preferring solitude instead.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802140521
• ISBN13: 9780802140524
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Dictatorship Dementia

This Portuguese novel is a mesmerizing and surrealist look at an obscure episode of history, though it's rather drifty and inconclusive. The real-life dictatorship in Portugal of Admiral Salazar (1932-1968) is examined through the life and relations of his self-righteous lackey Senhor Francisco, who has become old and washed up, bitter about being passed over as Salazar's successor, and is now wasting away in a demeaning nursing home. Each chapter is narrated by different characters who reminisce, often bitterly or sarcastically, about Francisco's brutal rise and fall. This includes his neglected family members, abused employees, pampered but slipping aristocrats, and various sycophants and opponents. Antonio Lobo Antunes uses this expository method to delve into the trials and tribulations of people living under a dictatorship, and this is especially interesting when it reveals the harsh class segregation of Portugal during that period, with the upper class feeling entitled to the dictatorship's favor, oppressing the working classes, and complaining about more equitable social developments that they're too lazy to stop. The thoughts of these types of characters, as well as underlings whose lives were damaged by Francisco's brutal treatment, are the true treasures of this novel, as we learn how average lives are distorted by bizarre politics, by way of real historical trends in Portugal. But the underlying difficulty of the book is that it is all in the form of fictional confessionals, with very little plot for the reader to hang onto, in favor of personal developments from an increasingly unwieldy cast of characters. Also, Antunes presents each character's thoughts in a non-linear, stream-of-consciousness style that surely represents the inner thought processes of confused and angry real people. The problem is that every single person thinks in this same style, making the book rather repetitive and drifty. Antunes' unique writing style and intriguing look at the human side of Portuguese history and politics are certainly fascinating and are likely to keep you interested. However, with the voluminous character-driven approach, you'll get the feeling that the novel isn't really leading anywhere conclusive. [~doomsdayer520~]

Magnificent work.

I just loved this book. It's deep,it's tragic, it's moving but it also has great humor. It tells the story of the downfall of an upper class family following the leftist revolution that took Portugal by storm in 1974. It's told by several people, all inter-related,like João, the helpless son of a powerful, arrogant land owner, close to the high ranks of Government, who now lays dying in a hospital bed, João's wife, Sofia and her very rich family, the cook ,the father's former secretary and mistress,etc. Thus a very rich portrait of the Portuguese political and social scene of the pre-revolution days emerges, with dictator Salazar reigning supreme. The characters are very powerful.Some you hate, like the father, some you really feel for, like João. He reminded me of the character named Balthasar in «TheBeastly Beatitudes of Balthasar B.» by J.P. Donleavy. Has the same kind of vulnerability. This is my favorite book by Antonio Lobo Antunes. He really knows how to tackle all this powerful stuff, like love and hate and incest and rape. Still he manages to make you laugh, sometimes. And cry too.