Goa Return Trip

Joining the army is not the same as being a Portuguese soldier in Goa and being arrested for crossing enemy lines to eat hunter-style rabbit. Living during the Estado Novo dictatorship is not the same as sleeping with a female member of the political police. Being an advertising executive is not the same as working in a duo with Ary dos Santos, Luís de Stau Monteiro, or Alexandre O’Neill. Unless, of course, we are talking about Artur Henriques, the young soldier and advertising executive we follow throughout Goa, Ida e Volta (Goa, There and Back).

This first-person account covers two very different periods in India: between 1956 and 1959, during military service in Goa, and in 1979, on a six-month trip that included other regions of India and Nepal. In this back and forth, there is a designer who inherits brushes and girlfriends from his master, an adventurer facing challenges and storms, a corporal with a general's luxuries. Is it a war book or post-colonial literature? Goa, Ida e Volta has another lineage: the picaresque style of Diniz Machado, adventures that begin with Hugo Pratt and end with Corto Maltese, and also "a certain je ne sais quoi" of Fernão Mendes Pinto.