Just imagine the canon of Western literature without damaged children. Think "Call It Sleep," "The Book of Daniel," "See: Under Love," just for starters. The history of the novel has been home to a primary school of sensitive and fragile child protagonists all traumatized by tragic parents and overwhelmed by the burdens of that legacy. "What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?," the latest novel by Portugal's most distinguished living writer, Antonio Lobo Antunes, can surely move to the head of the class of these disfigured portraits of adolescence best forgotten -- except when it comes to the imagination of a novelist