Abstract
In April 1974, the ultra-right authoritarian regime collapsed in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution, and at the same time one of the last colonial empires in the world collapsed. As part of their newly acquired freedom, some Lusophone African countries have decided to "repatriate" Portuguese families, who have been living outside the European continent for several generations, and to establish their own rules. Thus, thousands of people came to the original homeland of their ancestors, who often knew Portugal only from textbooks, and differed in language, style of dress and social customs. Those who were not accepted by mainstream society found it difficult to integrate, often falling to the bottom of society and carrying the trauma of being uprooted twice.
Two contemporary writers Dulce Maria Cardoso (*1964) and Isabela Figueiredo (*1963) also belonged to the so-called retornados at an early age. Their families fled from opposite corners of Africa, the first from Angola, the second from Mozambique. They recorded chillingly similar experiences in the partially autobiographical novels O Retorno (2011) and A Gorda (2016), both of which contributed to the significant de-tabooing of this still burning topic of the country, which still has significant debts in the process of decolonization.