While Salazar slept

Lisbon, 1941. An oasis of tranquility in a Europe ravaged by the horrors of World War II. Refugees arrive by the thousands, and Lisbon fills with millionaires and actresses, Jews and spies. Portugal becomes the stage for a secret war that Salazar allows but monitors from afar. Jack Gil Mascarenhas, a Portuguese-British spy, is tasked with dismantling the Nazi spy networks operating throughout the country, from Estoril to Cape St. Vincent, from Alfama to Ericeira. These are his memoirs, recounted 50 years later. He recalls the times he lived in a Lisbon full of sun, light, shadows, and loves. Jack Gil remembers the women he loved; the sumptuous atmosphere at the Hotel Aviz, where spies mingled with ambassadors and kings; the sinister members of Salazar's political police, or even the city's taxi drivers. A secret and hidden world where things happened "while Salazar slept," as Michael, Jack's great friend and also an MI6 spy, ironically put it. In a divided country, men become tougher and women more available. Intrigues and rumors simmer in a dirty and sophisticated war that transforms Portugal and those who lived there in the 1940s.