Jacinto was born and brought up in Paris and has never visited Portugal. He lives in a mansion crammed with books and with all the latest gadgets, for he believes that human happiness depends on a combination of erudition and the most sophisticated of mechanical aids. He surrounds himself with 'civilised' people and, by the age of 30, is monumentally bored. He grows disenchanted with his friends, and one by one, his gadgets let him down. However, a letter arrives from his estate manager in Portugal saying that they planning to move the bones of his ancestors to the newly renovated chapel. Would Jacinto like to be there? In great trepidation, Jacinto sets off with his best friend - Ze Fernandos, who is also the narrator - on the mammoth train journey through France and Spain to deepest Portugal. When they arrive, they find that none of the hundreds of boxes and crates that Jacinto despatched from Paris has arrived. How will Jacinto survive without civiliztion's essential comforts? What happens next surprises everyone, but none more so than Jacinto himself. In this very funny late novel, published after his death, Eca's satire is turned on the emptiness of city life and of modernity itself, and the bucolic second half, which bubbles with joie-de-vivre, reflects Eca's own recently discovered joy in country living at his wife's estates in Tormes. AUTHOR: Eca de Queiroz (1845-1900) is rightly considered to be Portugal's greatest novelist.
