Municipal mourning in Lisbon for the death of António Lobo Antunes
Municipal mourning has been decreed for March 7, with the Municipal Flag being placed at half-mast on all municipal buildings and facilities.
"We were lucky and privileged to live in the time of António Lobo Antunes. We were lucky and privileged to see the fruit of his obsession with writing. We were lucky and privileged to see in him the greatest interpreter of the Portugal of our time: the end of the empire, the experience of war, the complex psychology of this old country of ours," says the mayor of Lisbon.
"I have no doubt that Lobo Antunes is now part of the rare aristocracy of world literature, where the great masters we have grown to admire are to be found. Today we can only say with pride that we were the city and homeland of António Lobo Antunes," concludes Carlos Moedas.
António Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon on September 1, 1942.
With a degree in Medicine, a career he pursued in Angola during the Colonial War, he is considered "one of the greatest writers of contemporary Portuguese literature", with a career spanning more than four decades. In 1979 he published his first book: "Memória de Elefante", and "Os Cus de Judas". He has written more than 30 novels and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Lisbon, "his city", will soon be inaugurating the "Benfica Library - António Lobo Antunes", on Avenida Gomes Pereira. Lisbon's 19th municipal library will house around 20,000 titles from the literary collection he donated to the city.
"It was my wish to leave my papers, my books, my decorations to the country, and nothing better than to leave them to the city council of the city where I was born and where I feel good," said Lobo Antunes.
The new space will occupy two floors, with a total area of 1,850m2, with spaces for families, adults, children and young people. There will also be a multipurpose area with a gallery, as well as the "António Lobo Antunes Space", reinforcing the importance of his thought and literary work in the dissemination of the Portuguese language in Portugal and abroad.