Narratives of a real in ruins: two moments of post-April 25 Portuguese literature

Abstract

Several critics have pointed to a type of recovery of realism in the contemporary Portuguese narrative, especially that produced after the end of the “Estado Novo” and the consequent decolonization of African territories. If the period between the 30s and 70s in the 20th century was marked by silence and censorship, after the “Revolução dos Cravos” in 1974, we see the emergence of several novels that mainly bring the theme of the Colonial War as a focus. In contrast, some developments of this context, such as the condition of the returnees in Portuguese society, seem to arise only later, especially from the 1990s, and they have been gaining new breath in the 21st century. In this sense, this article proposes to analyze what we identify as two moments of tackling the real in contemporary Portuguese literature: the first one, which is focused on the years immediately after the Carnation Revolution and which has a greater focus on the Colonial War scene, in the books Os Cus de Judas (1979), Autópsia de um mar de ruínas (1984), A Costa dos Murmúrios (1988) and Jornada de África (1989); and the second moment, from the end of the 20th century until the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, in the books O esplendor de Portugal (1997), Caderno de memórias coloniais (2009) and O retorno (2012), that already bring special attention to the situation of returnees. In common, the two moments end up identifying a reality of ruins, especially the imaginary created by the “Estado Novo”.