Portugal sob lente alemã: Maria und Eusébio, de Michael Longerich

Abstract

Having studied History, Political Sciences and German Studies, Michael Longerich sets out on a dialogic journey, to capture political, economic, social and cultural nuances of an European country on a colonial route and post-colonial trajectory. Approaching a character with a common female name in the Portuguese-speaking world of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and an international football star, the author of Maria und Eusébio, born in Germany and residing in Denmark, reveals, in a novelistic text, aspects of an urban society in and after Estado Novo. Two main questions, when we turn to the opening page of the novel: what traces of reality and threads of imagination are intertwined in the image of Portugal presented by a German writer at a distance of decades, miles and the Portuguese language? What authorial purpose has approached - from the title of the book on - an anonymous character to a football star?