Customer Reviews

Man from Lisbon

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A historical novel about Alves Reis, a real-life con man who so flooded Portugal with counterfeit escudo notes in the 1920's that he almost crashed that nation's economy. But Reis was too smart to be a counterfeit-plates-in-the-basement type of guy; he masterfully forged documents to get a British banknote firm to print them, convincing the firm that the government of Portugal wanted the notes to secretly kick-start the economy in Portugal's colony in Angola. Reis goes from rags to riches and becomes a posterboy for conspicuous consumption. The movie-like plot takes us from Lisbon and Oporto to Angola, London and Paris where Reis has a torrid affair with a Hollywood-bound actress who is a friend of Hemingway and legendary Swedish "Match King," Ivar Kreuger. Slow in spots, (the 418-page hardback is about 100 pages too long), it's still an excellent read about the Bernie Madoff of 1920's Europe.

I read this book in 1978 when it 1st came out during a trip to Portugal. It was not long after the fall of Portugal's dictator who had been in place since the 1930s. The book gave a fascinating insight into some of the events that lead to that dictatorship. Introducing a large amount of undetectable counterfeit currency had the highly desirable effect of stimulating demand in the economy in the kind of way that Milton Keynes was proposing to governments at the time. It seems to have stopped Portugal slipping into the 1930s depression as quick as other countries. When it was detected it led to a crisis and the dictatorship. The dictator followed conventional economic policies for the time and cut spending with the result that the economy came to a shuddering halt. Highly relevant in today's financial crisis.
The other thing I found fascinating was that the Portuguese currency was issued not by the government but by a privately owned bank. This meant that if Alves Reis could use the counterfeit money to buy more than 50% of the shares in the issuing bank he could get away with it. The only party who could sue him for the false notes was the issuing bank - but he would have controlled that!!

All in all a very good read