Un libro all’inverso: Caranguejo di Ruben A.

Abstract

This article aims to analyse Ruben A.'s first novel, Caranguejo (1954), focusing on the narrative structure of the "shrimp", both in terms of form and content. The narrator, in a regressive movement from the tenth chapter to the first, tells the story and the life of Ele and Ela, an apathetic bourgeois couple, victims of social hypocrisy, until their conception. Through this analysis, we will see how the narrative structure, by denying time, space and the identity of the characters, allegorically represents the Portuguese reality under the dictatorship.