Description

The book opens as a lively guide through Portugal’s tangled literary past, where the narrator pokes fun at the chaotic editing of old chronicles and the iconoclastic duke Duarte Nunes, who shredded verses and left behind only ghostly fragments. With sharp wit, he contrasts the loss of epic sagas with the stubborn endurance of historical memory. Listeners are invited to trace the remnants of medieval poetry, the mutilated Nibelungen of Portuguese lore, and the bureaucratic absurdities that still shape the nation’s narrative.

From there the voice wanders beyond the Iberian peninsula, dreaming of Rome’s eternal ruins while clutching imagined copies of Horace, Tacitus and a battered copy of Shakespeare read beside an old‑sack. The prose blends scholarly footnotes with vivid, almost theatrical scenes of tavern debates, steam‑ship whistles and the rustle of ancient stone. This first act promises a richly layered exploration of how literature, history and personal imagination intersect, setting the stage for a journey that feels both scholarly and delightfully wandering.