KNOWLEDGE OF HELL.

New from Dalkey: KNOWLEDGE OF HELL. by António Lobo Antunes
review link: http://www.miamiherald.com/215/story/456729.html
I for one will add this one to my reading list.

This sounds fascinating. The possible link with/homage to Bergman particularly intrigues me. I'm adding this to my reading wishlist as well.

Actually there is another translation of Antunes coming out later this year. I'm a big fan and finished reading this one last week just before my wife and I went to NYC for a few days. Knowledge of Hell seems to have been an earlier work--first published in 1980. I liked it a lot but in my estimation it's not quite as good as An explanation of the birds, Fado Alexandrino, Act of the Damned, or The Inquisitors' manual. If you are a fan though Knowledge of Hell is a must read. Not to take anything away from Jose Saramago--a great writer in his own right but do not understand how he won the Nobel at Lobo Antunes' expense. There is nobody that writes like Antunes--kind of a cross between Blood meridian style Cormac McCarthy mixed with the very black humor of Louis Ferdinand Celine.

For some reason Knowledge of Hell became a toilet side book. It was amazing how I could pick it up after any amount of time and be directly back where Antunes was. I wouldn't compare it to his others, except to say that I don't think anything he writes can be better than Fado Alexandrino, but he's at least still alive and well.

I have moved knowledge of hell to the balcony and highlighted an terrific description of a psych-inmate...I cannot read dozens of pages at a time becasue the prose is too amazing