Resurrecta

Lisbon, 1755. All Saints Day dawns sunny and promises a pleasant day of celebration. Nothing suggests that a series of earthquakes of an intensity never seen before will bring down, in just moments, houses, cathedrals, churches and palaces on the heads of its inhabitants. The tsunami that follows them, together with an apocalyptic fire, turns the party into a tragedy for the king and his court, but also for convicts and harlots, ladies, monks, prelates, surgeons, soldiers, sailors and even for a little monkey marmoset. A choral story, vibrant and terrifying as well as sensory and human, Resurrecta tells us, minute by minute, the six hours that transformed the history not only of Lisbon, but of Europe. Vic Echegoyen, with a narrative mastery that is difficult to match, gives us a story that reaches the heart under the guise of disorder and horror: he weaves a complex and simple mosaic at the same time, in which human emotions and reactions to adversity are condensed , because its characters -so many of them unforgettable- keep the narrative pulse at a demonic pace: from the responsibility of the king's minister to the galley's thirst for revenge; from the young woman who goes out desperate in search of her lover to her political opportunist; the overwhelmed doctor; the architect who does not want to survive his work; the nun who needs to go out to help; the calculating courtier or the castrato who sings for the victims. One by one, all of them will be the mainstays of the new Lisbon resurrected from its rubble.