Ships Returning, Ships Adrift. Identity and Decolonization in a Novel by António Lobo Antunes

The question of identity and its problems is analyzed both on an individual and a national sense, within a post-colonial and post-imperialist context such as the Portuguese one. The starting point for the reflections is a novel by António Lobo Antunes, As naus (1988), whose characters are important figures such as Vasco da Gama and Camões, who, at the same time, arrive to Lisbon from Africa as adrift veterans at the beginning of the decolonization wars in the XXth century. Different layers of the past are included in their identity, but society around them seems to adopt a different shift. Meanwhile, details accumulating in the narrative, always in a depressive sense, could indicate their alienation in a historical, geographical and psychological sense, very near to the condition of the so-called ‘retornados’.