Antunes, Antônio Lobo

(1942- )

   Noted Portuguese novelist and writer, chronicler of his people's various responses to the colonial African wars (1961-75) and to the Revolution of Carnations 1974-75. Born in Lisbon, the son of a physician, Lobo Antunes was trained as a doctor as well and became a practicing psychiatrist. During the so-called "African Wars," when Portugal under the Estado Novo fought to retain its African colonies, Lobo Antunes served four years in the Portuguese Army in Angola. One of the literary results of that formative experience was his noted novel, South of Nowhere, published first in Portugal and then published and acclaimed in an English translation in 1983. Among his other novels also translated into English and published by major trade houses in the Anglophone world are An Explanation of the Birds (1991), Fado Alexandrino (1990), and Act of the Damned (1993).

   See also Literature.