The Shipwrecks of Camões

ADVENTURE

Pages: 238 Ratings:

Book Format: Choose an option

Free shipping valid on standard-priced orders only

*Your order will be dispatched after the publication date of 14-08-2026

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.

Born in 1941, for half a century Mário Cláudio has been one of Portugal’s outstanding authors. He is a prolific writer of novels, poetry, plays, essays, children’s books, non-fiction and journalism. He has a degree in law from the University of Coimbra, a diploma in librarianship and archive studies from the same university, and an MA in Library and Information Studies from University College London. His output of novels is multifaceted and vast, reaching forty at the last count. His work has been translated into various languages, and he has won many literary prizes. He still lives in Porto, where he was born. His novel Os Naufrágios de Camões was published in 2016 by Publicações Dom Quixote (Lisbon). Its translator, Ronald Black, is better known in Scotland as a translator of Gaelic poetry, and a writer or editor of works on the language, literature, history and traditions of the Highlands, but he has a special place in his heart for Portugal, where one of his daughters lives with her husband and children.