Lisboa is a novel in travel-book format. In Lonely Planet-inspired chapters about hotels, bars, museums and ‘get-aways’, the reader is guided through, on one hand, the capital of Portugal and, on the other, the thoughts of a Norwegian man in love and far from home.

The Norwegian protagonist moves to Lisbon to be with an Inter-rail traveller whom he met in Oslo. Inês. The Portuguese girl with the big rucksack. But how easy is it really to live together when you come from different cultures? How are you to know if you have made the right choice? Why isn’t love more like how it seems in the movies? And why must all conversations between Norwegians and Portuguese, however desperately serious, end up in a row about dried cod?

Lisboa does not give an exhaustive picture of either the capital of Portugal nor the search for true love in our time, but you will nonetheless learn something about both topics. The book also contains useful spoken vocabulary, restaurant rankings and at least one cutting remark about Karsten Alnæs’s 2001 Guide to Lisbon.

‘Lisboa is part romantic comedy and part fact googling.’
DAGENS NÆRINGSLIV

‘Ola Innset uses many great touches. He uses a warm and entertaining narrative voice for what is simply a good travel guide, which becomes rather funny when he starts getting irritated by everything that is wrong with the country and not like home.’
KLASSEKAMPEN