The Natural Order of Things

A novel by Antonio Lobo Antunes, "The Natural Order of Things", with an excellent translation by Richard Zenith. Antunes seems more accessible to me than the work of Jose Saramago, mainly based on the text. Saramago imbeds intricate story lines into block text that sometimes confuse me as a reader, though his characters and their place in the nameless city are masterfully portrayed. Antunes, likewise, plays with text, but it is written in the voice of the speaker, not the writer, and includes tangents into dreams, memory, and history that I find remarkably honest to how we think and communicate with ourselves and each other. I'm excited to read more of Antunes' work. He seems to have a penchant for the horror of circus shows.  

Writing is like a drug. You begin [to do it] just for the fun and you end up organizing your life around your vice, like the addicts. That’s the life I lead. It is the same with my own pain. I look at it like a schizoid: there’s the man who suffers and the writer who asks himself how he can use that suffering in his work.
–António Lobo Antunes