The Shipwrecks of Camões

The Shipwrecks of Camões, translated from the Portuguese Os Naufrágios de Camões, is a semi-historical novel, a brilliant exploration of shifting identities, shifting times, shifting spaces. Two of its main characters definitely existed - the poet Luís Vaz de Camões (1524/5-1580, 'the Portuguese Shakespeare', the first great European poet to travel the world) and the rumbustious English explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821-90). Other historical figures make cameo appearances. But the person whose fantasies tie it all together is a thoroughly fictional 20th-century one, a rather crazy Portuguese-American called Timothy who is the cause of a great deal of the humour in the book. The wonderful cast of characters in The Shipwrecks of Camões is one of its two great strengths. The other is the astonishing variety of its settings - mediaeval and modern Portugal, Cambodia, Goa, East Africa, Italy, and even Napoleon's invasion of Russia. If you like fast-moving novels about dead poets, stirring events and exotic locations, this one is for you.