A House In The World

A House in the World has as the backdrop a house of country folk in the region of Beira Alta, Portugal. But this house, literally and figuratively speaking, soon becomes a mansion, spreading outward to Africa, the Americas and beyond. Often too—moved by a pressing promise of perfection, communion, fulfilment and the desire to escape human made prisons of all sorts—this house enters the realm of the transcendental sublime, suspending the borders between physical and material worlds, placing us in a dwelling without frontiers, nations, flags, a poetic zone of bliss. We are in the presence of a novel that explores specific and important events related to Portugal’s history and the history of its former African colonies, spanning approximately one century, ending in the latter part of the 20th century, after the April Revolution.