Don't Enter So Quickly Into This Dark Night

Author: António Lobo Antunes

Translator: Carlos Batista

Editora: Christian Bourgois Editeur

In a villa in Estoril, a seaside town in Portugal, Maria Clara's father leaves for open-heart surgery. In his absence, she takes the key to the forbidden attic where he used to spend his time. And deep inside the cupboards, she finds relics of a long-forgotten lineage... As she embarks on this genealogical investigation, the other members of the family gravitate around her: a listless mother searching for a lover, a eccentric grandmother who gambles at the casino, a sister who is both beautiful and unbearable... The voices of all the protagonists then intertwine. Voices trapped in lies and social conventions, the decadence of a bourgeoisie nostalgic for the dictatorship, and prisoners of troubling family secrets.