After I died, many things happened to me

Published in 2009, the book follows a man who, after dying, continues to live—or something close to it—in an everyday existence that blends the absurd, the comic, and the tragic. Here, death is neither an end nor a transcendence; it is a disconcerting extension of life, with all its confusion and irony.

Ricardo Adolfo transforms a universal theme into a deeply contemporary experience: the feeling of living in a world where everything seems post-life, depersonalized, saturated, and directionless. The fragmented, darkly humorous narrative exposes the banality of everyday life. 

The author dismantles the idea of redemption, rejects sentimentality, and reveals the grotesque hidden in small routines. After I Died, a Lot of Things Happened is a book about the absurdity of modern existence, where dying may be just another way of continuing to live without knowing why.

Ricardo Adolfo (b. 1974) was born in Luanda and grew up in Lisbon. He is a novelist, screenwriter, and advertising copywriter, and has lived between Amsterdam and Tokyo, geographies reflected in the cosmopolitan and ironic tone of his writing. His work is distinguished by its vivid language, characters who move on the margins, and subtle critique of the illusions of urban and contemporary life. Adolfo writes with humor, but without complacency: he uses the absurd to illuminate reality. Between bewilderment and lucidity, he has become one of the most original voices in contemporary Portuguese fiction.