‘The Inquisitors’ Manual by Antonio Lobo Antunes    (2004) – 431 pages          Translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith

This has been a remarkable reading year for me, in particular for having discovered the Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes.

Antunes removes the veneer of niceness and reveals just how crude and coarse we humans can be. Yes, we humans are animals and not very nice animals at that and don’t you forget it. And dictators bring out the absolute worst in the human animal. Antunes is one of the few writers who can face up to this.

Instead of a narrator explaining the words, thoughts, and actions of the characters, in ‘The Inquisitors’ Manual’ we get the voices of about twenty different characters, each expressing his or her point of view. They tell us how things really are, not how they are supposed to be.

The voices that speak are quite evenly divided between the males and the females. This is an effective device for Antunes. Through the various voices we get closer to the real story. But we never get the complete story, because no one knows everything. There is no omniscience.

At the center is the political minister, Senhor Francisco. He is a close advisor to Professor Antonio Salazar who was the actual dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Salazar ruled Portugal with a tight fascist fist for decades with the Catholic church backing him up. He used secret police to crush opposition, and he and his close advisors, including Senhor Francisco, could put anyone they wanted into prison just by calling them “Communists”.

Senhor Francisco runs his farm Palmela, “a weird farm full of birds and cows”, like Salazar runs Portugal, and after his wife Isabel leaves him, Francisco uses some of the females working on the farm including the cook and the milkman’s daughter for sexual purposes resulting in a couple of illegitimate children. When the cook is ready to deliver his baby, he calls in the veterinarian rather than a doctor.

Years later the old decrepit Minister Francisco is attracted to the young woman Mila since she reminds him of his first wife Isabel who left him, and he showers Mila and her mother with presents and gifts. While he is fondling her, Mila can’t hide her repulsion.

Her mother asks, “What did you do to the codger, Mila, that he went away looking like a man about to die?”

Before the dictator Professor Salazar visits the Minister’s farm, Senhor Francisco has his workers shoot all the crows so Salazar doesn’t think the crows are mocking and taunting him with their cawing.

What impresses in ‘The Inquisitors’ Manual’ is the vivid visceral use of words and images throughout. This is writing that takes you outside of the safe, comfortable territory into wild uncharted original terrain.

Grade:    A