The Natural Order of Things
Contributors: Richard Zenith (Translator)
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: February 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780802116581
Subjects: Portuguese Novel And Short Story; Fiction; Modern fiction; Literary
First sentence: Until I was six years old, Yolanda, I didn't even know my mother's family or the smell of chestnut trees that the September wind brought from Buraca as sheep and goats scurried up the road toward the abandoned cemetery, goaded by an old man wearing a cap and by the voices of the dead.
Description: "A diabetic teenage girl in a Lisbon apartment complex is kept awake by the whispered childhood memories of the middle-aged civil servant lover she despises. Her father, once a miner in South Africa, is now reduced to dreams of "flying underground." An officer in the pre-revolutionary army is tortured in prison on charges of conspiracy, plagued by memories of his illegitimate sister, locked away to live as a ghost in the attic like Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre.

A secret policeman, who has abandoned his sanity to teach hypnotism by correspondence course, unwittingly holds the key to their secret histories."--BOOK JACKET.