The novella and conto, short forms that lend themselves to satire, social comment and the lyric impulse, are at the heart of Portuguese fiction. We can trace the history of the nation and of the Portuguese imagination in these vivid stories. "Profes...

"The Peregrination of Fernao Mendes Pinto, soldier of fortune, trader, pirate, agent, ambassador. During twenty-one years in Ethiopia, Persia, Malaya, India, Burma, Siam, China, Japan, sailing uncharted oriental seas, he was five times shipwrecked, t...