Para Onde Vão os Gatos Quando Morrem?

A grown man returns to Ataúro, the island off East Timor where he spent his childhood, looking for someone, and memory takes him back there. As a boy, Ernesto lives with his father, the stern Portuguese official in charge of the island, and a Timorese servant called Silêncio. No one will tell him what became of his mother, said only to have vanished on a journey, and his father pushes away every sign of tenderness, even towards a dog, with a warning about someone named Eustácio. Then fifteen-year-old Beatriz arrives by boat, sure she has come to teach him, and the two learn she was really sent to marry his father. His coming of age runs beside his country's history as Portuguese rule begins to come apart.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

267 pages in the original

Genres

Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Timor-Leste

First published

2017 by Sextante

Author's age

59 when first published

ISBN

9789896761905 (original)