Oh, Portugal! If you love getting lost in stories set in specific places, there are some fantastic novels that bring Portugal to life. From Lisbon’s historic streets to the quiet mountains, these books offer some memorable journeys.
Here are fifteen novels I’ve really enjoyed that have Portugal as their backdrop.
Imagine 18th-century Portugal during the building of the massive Mafra Palace. This story introduces Baltasar, a soldier who lost a hand in the war, and Blimunda, who can see inside people. They get caught up with a priest obsessed with building a flying machine, the Passarola.
It’s a tale set against the grandeur of royalty and the shadow of the Inquisition, full of love and sheer human inventiveness.
This book tells the story of Jacinto, a wealthy man living a life full of the latest Parisian gadgets and high society. He finds himself completely bored and unhappy with modern city life. Then, he inherits his family’s old estate in the Portuguese mountains.
He decides to leave Paris behind. The story beautifully contrasts the frantic energy of the city with the peace of the countryside as Jacinto discovers a different, perhaps more meaningful, way to live.
This classic Portuguese novel throws you into the world of Father Amaro, a young priest assigned to a small town called Leiria. Soon after arrival, he becomes entangled with Amélia, a devout young woman from his parish.
Their secret relationship creates a web of lies and moral questions. The book really looks at the power of the Church in everyday life and the damage caused by hypocrisy.
Meet Gonçalo Ramires, the last heir of a noble Portuguese family whose best days seem long past. He wants to restore his family’s name and decides to write a historical novel about his heroic ancestors.
At the same time, he has to navigate his own questionable choices and modern-day political life. It’s a story about honor, ambition, and finding your place when the world around you is changing.
This is a big, wonderful novel about the highs and lows of a wealthy Lisbon family in the 19th century. The story centers on Carlos da Maia, a sophisticated doctor, and his deep, ill-fated love affair.
You get such a rich picture of Lisbon’s upper-class society, its elegance but also its emptiness. Through the Maias, you see themes of love, ambition, and the slow decay of fortunes and ideals.
Imagine riding in a carriage late at night near Sintra when suddenly, you’re abducted! That’s what happens to two friends in this quick-paced story. It starts as a bizarre kidnapping but soon involves secret letters, shadowy figures, and hidden agendas.
The plot keeps twisting, and the characters (and the reader!) have to constantly rethink what’s really going on.
Step into Lisbon in 1938, with fascism growing stronger across Europe. Pereira is an older journalist who mostly keeps to himself, responsible for the culture page of a small newspaper. His quiet world shifts dramatically when he meets a young, anti-fascist couple.
Their passion forces Pereira to confront his own beliefs and consider taking a stand. It’s a powerful story about waking up to the world and finding courage.
This unusual story unfolds over just one hot Sunday in Lisbon. The narrator has an appointment to meet a famous, long-dead poet (Fernando Pessoa!) at noon.
While he waits and wanders the city, he has strange encounters – with a taxi driver, a seller of lottery tickets, a gypsy woman, figures from his past. It’s a dreamlike journey through memory and regret, full of Lisbon atmosphere.
This book cleverly braids two stories together. In modern Lisbon, Inspector Zé Coelho investigates the disturbing death of a young woman found on a beach. Meanwhile, flashbacks take us to Portugal during World War II, a time of spies, Nazi gold, and deals over tungsten.
The past haunts the present as Coelho’s case uncovers secrets buried for decades. You really get a sense of Portugal’s complex history here.
It’s 1936, and Ricardo Reis, a doctor and poet, has returned to Lisbon after years in Brazil. Europe is tense, with the Spanish Civil War nearby and Portugal under Salazar’s regime.
Reis wanders the rainy city, has encounters with two different women, and regularly chats with the ghost of Fernando Pessoa, the poet who invented Reis as one of his literary personalities. It’s a fascinating exploration of identity, reality, and mortality.
This novel connects three different parts set decades apart. In the early 1900s, a young man named Tomás walks backward (yes, really!) through Lisbon and drives an early automobile into the mountains, searching for an extraordinary religious artifact.
Later, a grieving pathologist performs an autopsy that reveals something incredible. Finally, years after that, a Canadian politician moves to a remote Portuguese village with a chimpanzee companion.
Their stories link up in surprising ways around themes of grief, faith, and how we carry on.
Raimund Gregorius, a quiet classics teacher in Switzerland, makes a sudden decision one day. He walks out of his life and boards a night train to Lisbon.
His quest is to understand the life of Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese doctor and writer whose thoughtful, passionate book he stumbled upon.
In Lisbon, Gregorius pieces together Prado’s story, a life lived under the Salazar dictatorship, full of resistance, love, and difficult choices.
Picture Lisbon in the summer of 1940. The city is crowded with refugees desperate to escape wartime Europe. Two American couples, the Ashworths and the Frelengs, find themselves waiting for passage to New York. They meet at their adjacent hotels and become closely involved.
As they spend time together, secrets emerge, and unexpected attractions complicate their lives in this tense, uncertain atmosphere.
Get ready for a globe-trotting adventure! Tomás Noronha, a Portuguese historian and code-breaker, gets drawn into a search for Albert Einstein’s hidden final theory – something Einstein called “God’s Formula.” The quest takes Tomás from Lisbon to Iran and Tibet.
He must decipher clues left by Einstein himself, uncovering connections between science, religion, and the very nature of the universe.
This novel reimagines the life of Mariana Alcoforado, a 17th-century Portuguese nun confined to a convent in Beja. She experiences an intense, forbidden love affair with a French cavalry officer stationed nearby.
When he leaves, she pours her heart out in a series of passionate letters. Based on the famous “Letters of a Portuguese Nun,” the story captures Mariana’s deep longing, devotion, and eventual heartbreak within the quiet convent walls.