Recounting the author’s travels in India by paralleling them with those of 16th-century Portuguese soldier and poet Luis de Camoens—author of the Portuguese national epic The Lusiads—this magical, exquisite narrative, reminiscent journeys to the island of Diu, won by the Portuguese from the navy of Suleiman the Magnificent. Visiting Goa, the author meets the Rodrigues family, people who inhabit a two-hundred-year-old house full of history and rats. Throughout his travels, he encounters those who wish the Portuguese would come back—and those who are very glad they're gone.