The 3 lives

A love story, a family saga, a detective mystery, a portrait of a world threatening to fall off the tightrope, Três Vidas (Three Lives) is one of João Tordo's most important novels, earning him the José Saramago Literary Prize.
António Augusto Milhouse Pascal lives far from the world, in an old Alentejo mansion, with his three rule-averse grandchildren and a taciturn gardener. His isolation is broken by visits from wealthy clients seeking help from the old patriarch, once an important spy and counter-spy, an active witness to the great wars of the 20th century. Our narrator - a Lisboner of modest origins - enters the story when Milhouse Pascal hires him as an archivist of the secrets involving his clients. The young man could not have guessed, upon accepting the job, that it would ultimately consume his own life. From the moment he falls in love with Camila, the boss's granddaughter with dreams of becoming a tightrope walker, who disappears after a trip to New York, the narrator's destiny becomes irreversibly entwined in the family's mysteries, splitting his existence into three.