‘Tiago Veiga, a biography’ by Mário Cláudio: the march of the twentieth century or the memory of contemporaneous Portugal

Abstract

Mário Cláudio’s novel, Tiago Veiga, uma biografia (2011), is a long and uni­que biography that follows the path of former biographies. Three distinct forms of memory writing can be detached here among other singularities. Firstly, there is the idea of a challenging and well aware heteronimic pro­cess that is focused in the misterious life of Tiago Veiga. Secondly, there is the biographic portrait that is constructed within the observance of the gender codes and beholds a wide scope of intertextual rememberances. Finally, this becomes a unique crytical biography of Portugal during one century, because it recreates the cosmopolitan life of an unknown character born in 1910.