Pallade Veneta - Portugal mourns acclaimed writer Antonio Lobo Antunes

A trained psychiatrist, Lobo Antunes wrote more than 30 novels dealing with topics ranging from Portugal's battles in its former colonies to the dictatorship that ran the country and social ills such as drug addiction.

He wrote in an elaborate, metaphorical style that he called "controlled delirium". But his storytelling earned several awards, including the 2007 Camoes Prize, the leading Portuguese-language literary honour. He was regularly cited as a possible Nobel literature prize candidate.

The eldest of six sons of a leading Portuguese medical professor, Lobo Antunes trained as a doctor and served with the Portuguese army in Angola from 1971 to 1973.

He worked in psychiatry until his second novel, published in 1979 and translated into English as "The Land At The End Of The World", saw his writing career take off.

Lobo Antunes eventually devoted himself to novels, poetry and commentaries from 1985.

The government ordered a day of national mourning on Saturday.

"Antonio Lobo Antunes wrote all his work as a novelist, but also as a columnist, in a register of incisive tenderness, placing side by side the pain and failure of ordinary lives with political tragedies, excess and empathy," President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said in a tribute.

Married at least twice and the father of three daughters, Lobo Antunes beat cancer three times while continuing to write an average of one novel a year until recently. A journalist who carried out a series of interviews with Lobo Antunes said he had been suffering from a form of dementia.

A.Fallone--PV