Augusto Abelaira has assembled a considerable body of work: eleven novels, three plays, and one collection of short stories. He is considered a neorealist writer, and on the whole he has remained faithful to the ideals of neorealism. This movement, which began in the late 1930s, in its first phase was devoted above all to the progress of the working class, and most of its fiction was set in rural Portugal. However, from the late 1950s onward, although neorealist writers still believed in the ultimate ideal of a transformation of man and society and of a collective happiness, they began to be concerned with the middle classes and their problems.

Abelaira's urban novels take place in Lisbon, with the exception of the first, which is set in Italy in order to avoid the censorship of the time. These novels deal mainly with the politically dissatisfied intellectuals of the...