I realized I had forgotten my book as soon as I sat down on the ferry. It was the perfect paperback, too. Just right for my solo overnight trip to Victoria where the agenda was to do nothing but wander around and read in coffee shops and relax. And so I walked from the dock directly to Russell Books and stalked the aisles, waiting for something to call to me. Downstairs, at the very edge of Fiction, I spotted the distinctive binding and cover design of an Archipelago title. Aha! Something from far away to transport my soul!

It worked. My destination was Luanda in 1975, as the chaos of Angolan independence overtakes a frightened and agoraphobic Portuguese woman named Ludo, who barricades herself in her apartment. For 28 years. Over the course of 37 chapters, stark stories of her self-confinement and the relentlessly invading glimpses, vibrant anecdotes and tales of political upheaval and social transformation are somehow stitched almost together. The backdrop of colonial independence and the intimate scale of personal trauma and bearing witness are harmonized in a genuinely interesting way. As Agualusa says, "A man with a good story is practically a king," and there are some good stories here. Sometimes intense and sometimes elliptical. Which is, one imagines, a lot like watching a revolution from a window.