The novel "The Forbidden Kingdom" by Dutch novelist "Jan Jacob Slauerhoff", translated by Mustafa Mahmoud, tells a multi-layered adventure story that moves between East and West and across centuries. It also seems to combine two unconnected lives: the first of a twentieth-century radio operator, and the second of the exiled sixteenth-century poet Luis Camões, each embarking on their own perilous journey to "Macau", the Portuguese trading post.