Book Launch in Lisbon 6/10/2017 – Ultimatum (a novel by Landeg White)
A book launch for Landeg’s new novel Ultimatum at Ler Devegar bookstore in Lisbon, Portugal on the 6th October 2017 at 18:30.
This is a free event at one of Lisbon’s finest bookstores with a presentation by Rui Zink.
January, 1890 — Britain threatens Portugal with an Ultimatum: Abandon south-east Africa or face a naval bombardment of Lisbon.
Three centuries earlier, the poet, Luís Vaz de Camões, described the region at issue —
Behold the lake which is the Nile’s source.
And the green Zambezi, too, begins its course.
Further upstream, the river becomes serpentine, twisting itself into a vast swamp, known to Europeans as Elephant Marsh, choked with papyrus, monstrous baobabs, and marabou storks like coffins. Every mud bank has a gang of crocodiles, the air thick with mosquitoes and the nearest horizon a tousled fringe of swamp palms …
Could the European Powers go to War over such a Wilderness?