Translated from the Portguese by Daniel Hahn The extraordinary story of two generations in a Lisbon family of carpenters and of a father's attempt to outrun his fate in the marathon at the Stockholm Olympics in 1908. 'A story of sex and treachery, of ambition and frustration, of a mostly thwarted desire to please ... Peixoto has an acute ear for cadence, a sharp eye for the luminous image and a good nose for the pungent'