Julio, aged nineteen, has just left the provinces to settle down in the outskirts of Lisbon. He lives there in a poor area with his uncle Afonso and starts working as an apprentice ...
After a stint in the army fighting in Angola, a soldier comes home to find his sweetheart has married his brother. He makes advances towards his sister-in-law, but she turns him down. ...
João is the spiritual heir (the term he prefers to bastard) of Manuel Brandão, his dying godfather, and at the same time the political leader of a small party of a disintegrating governmental coalition.