'Lusitania' by Almeida Faria: between historiographical fiction and autobiographical testimony

Abstract

Lusitania by Almeida Faria is an epistolary novel in which we witness the correspondence exhanged among several members descending from the same middle class family, bourgeois countrymen. Far apart, due to political and social evolution reasons, linked to the period, throughout the year of 1974, the characters tell each other their thoughts, their reactions (or lack of reaction), but, above all, their doubts regarding the political upheaval and its first consequences. We will show how the narrative’s epistolary polyphonic structure underlines the post-April 25th distress felt by part of the Portuguese population and which is widely represented in the Portuguese novel from the end of the 20th century. However, this also reveals the author’s scepticism concerning the evolution of his country.