Judith West

Lisbon Story Judith West

This beautiful, exotic novella follows Catarina (Cat) as she, in turn, follows the wish of her father, dying in San Francisco, to sell his old Lisbon apartment.

When Cat arrives in Portugal, she discovers that her friend Tonio has installed his ex-lover, Mateus, in the apartment, where he too is dying - of AIDS. As Cat struggles to untangle a complicated web of present desires and past secrets, she makes a series of shocking discoveries.

The Portuguese revolution serves as backdrop to Cat's father's terrible secret about his own suffering under the dictatorship, but it is the dramatic sequence of redemption-at-a-distance - as Cat's father manages to save Mateus, and even Tonio, from across the ocean - that will most startle listeners, and leave all but the most stalwart in tears.