ABSTRACT
Based on the exhaustive collection of published books focussed on the arrival in Portugal of the Portuguese who lived in the ex-colonies, this chapter has two main objectives. The first is to participate in the recent discussion about “Late Colonialism Literature” or “End of the Portuguese Empire Literature.” The second is to question the consensus formed around the idea that, after the Carnation Revolution, and until recently the written output on the Return of the Portuguese settlers was so small as to be almost non-existent. It is argued that this idea is empirically inaccurate, and that the number of books published by retornados since 1974 testifies from a very early age to the affirmation and consolidation of a certain written culture among this specific population. This chapter analyses some of the main themes in this literature, such as the sense of loss, the intention of denunciation, the glorifying evocation of some episodes of Portugal’s history, the need to ensure the survival of African memories, the work ethic of retornados, the paradisiacal conviviality among the whites, and the almost total absence of descriptions of the colonised black Africans, testifying to the tragic gap that separated Portuguese whites and colonised black Africans.
