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The Land at the End of the World

António Lobo Antunes,

Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

Start date: June 15, 2017

Finish date: July 15, 2017

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Mar 24, 2012 Steve rated it liked it

Shelves: war, fiction

Antonio Lobo Antunes’ The Land at the End of the World may well be the best war novel written by a leftist psychiatrist of the Freudian school. I suppose that sounds a bit snarky, or narrow, but it’s not meant to be a criticism but a snapshot of what to expect. The unnamed narrator (like Antunes) was a medic during Portugal’s war in Angola. He is haunted by his experience, and his memories, nine years later, are constantly circling back to the war and its horrors.

The novel opens at (appropriate Antonio Lobo Antunes’ The Land at the End of the World may well be the best war novel written by a leftist psychiatrist of the Freudian school. I suppose that sounds a bit snarky, or narrow, but it’s not meant to be a criticism but a snapshot of what to expect. The unnamed narrator (like Antunes) was a medic during Portugal’s war in Angola. He is haunted by his experience, and his memories, nine years later, are constantly circling back to the war and its horrors.

The novel opens at (appropriately) a zoo. In such a setting there are of course multiple memory triggers to take him back to the jungles of Angola. One particularly nasty, but important image is that of the baboons’ “anal conjunctivitis” which the narrator compares, while talking to his current lover, to “eyelids inflamed with combustible hemorrhoids.” Ouch. But there’s a point to such imagery, which is betrayed by the translator. The real title of the book is meant to be Judas’s Asshole, which the translator, Margaret Jull Costa, in her introduction, deemed to be too “flip.” Maybe that’s what she saw, but since an earlier translation followed a similar tack when it came to the title, I tend to think the editors were worrying about selling a book with the word “Asshole” in its title (especially to libraries). I’m probably spending too much time on this, but this is meant be an angry book. The whole A-hole thing is a deliberate thread throughout the book, and it’s meant to be an indictment of Portuguese society, which was a fascist one at the time the narrator went to war (in the late 1960s).

But being a Freudian, Antunes spends a great deal of time pondering other things, other openings. By the end of the book this all gets wearying. The narrator loves his women, or wants to at least. And they all (wife, African lover, current lover) seem to meld together, as he keeps up a novel long conversation with them about how messed up he is by the war, while contemplating, graphically, all things sexual. Eventually the women get tagged as Sophia, which I found pretentious, but such a stick by this point is part of a large bundle. As a war novelist, Antunes is one of the most sensitive to ever set pen to paper, which can at times be quite beautiful, and at other times to be unnecessary cultural clutter for high end hipsters. The novel jumps from one modernist poet or artist to another, and then back again to Angola. The Angolan scenes, by the way, are quite well done. There are comparisons, on the book jacket, to Faulkner and Conrad. I think there’s some truth to that, in both character studies and settings. Still, I felt that the many interesting parts (and there are some stunning passages worth reading) didn’t equal a satisfying whole.
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Oct 08, 2019 Travellinckx rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novel, fiction, literature

"... The future is a thick fog over a Tagus empty of boats, just the occasional distressed cry in the mist, I will live for a long time in your gestures, my daughter...

...and suddenly there was the plane taking me back to Angola, my wife leaning against a pillar, not saying a word.....I watched the Boeing you were traveling in from the departure lounge window, she wrote, and i felt such a pang."

George Steiner is absolutely right when he said that Antunes is the heir to Conrad and Faulkner ...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Ching-In marked it as to-read

Sep 05, 2012 Sam marked it as to-read

Sep 12, 2012 Patty marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Nov 04, 2017 Alyson Zikmund rated it really liked it

Aug 21, 2022 Anna Ruth FL marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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