To the capital
By: Eça de Queirós ; [English translation, John Vetch].
Series: Aspects of Portugal
Publisher: Carcanet in association with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Manchester [England]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 293
Description: Artur Corvelo inherits a legacy, quits his provincial home town and sets out for the capital. Armed hopefully with some poems and a heroic play, he seeks literary renown and entry into fashionable intellectual and social circles. Disillusion follows and he returns to his origins, his play unperformed, poorer certainly, wiser perhaps.

As so often with Eca de Queiros, the plot is simple; the fascination of the novel lies in the characters, the incidents and, above all, the warm humanity and mordant wit of this acute observer of the human condition.