Lusitano Hotel

Twenty-five years after the first edition, only Eça's quote has aged a century in this summary, because Hotel Lusitano continues to portray us in our entirety and, if it has any expression lines, they only give it more charm: they are from smiling.
The rooms will now have television, there will be a rooftop bar, as observed, in the preface to the present edition, by that American who could almost be a protagonist named Richard Zenith. But in this Hotel Lusitano, Rui Zink's first novel, we remain at home, before the mirror.

«The simplest spirits will say that it is a “light” book, but “heavy” are the artillery and the prose of the sergeants of letters. Rui Zink, who makes his debut in the novel with this Hotel Lusitano, does not seem suited for such a post. A title of a militiaman, perhaps, even a draft dodger or deserter, suits him better. Hotel Lusitano, moreover, is a kind of desertion from realism, resorting to it, only, out of pure irony. […] It is about this – what is, after all, realism, what is a novel? – that Rui Zink writes, taking the opportunity to ironically evoke some tics and sanctuaries of an entire generation of left-wing intellectuals.»
Júlio Pinto, Diário Popular, 1987

Rui Zink, born in Lisbon in 1961, is one of the most singular voices in contemporary Portuguese literature. Writer, professor, and intellectual provocateur, he built a body of work marked by irony, social criticism, and the rare ability to transform the everyday into revealing absurdity.

In books such as O Destino Turístico, A Instalação do medo, or Hotel Lusitano, he explores the tension between fantasy and reality: humor as an acute form of thought.