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After those turning points the merest common sense ensured that Portugal's neutrality should be such as to prove acceptable to the western allies. Geographical realities allowed no decisive preference for the Axis powers before the great turning points of 1942: unlike Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal sent no troops to aid the Germans on its eastern front. Featuring a preface by Cape Verde's first president, Aristides Pereira, and a foreword by Cabral himself, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky remains an invaluable resource for the study both of the region and of African liberation struggles as a whole.Although modelled with local variations on the ideas and structures of Italian Fascism, and later stiffened by an admiration for German National-Socialism, Portugal's Estado Novo was constrained to neutrality during the Second World War. The book also provides one of the earliest accounts of the assassination of the PAIGC's founder, Amilcar Cabral, and documents the movement's remarkable success in recovering from the death of its leader and in eventually attaining independence.

Basil Davidson, a leading authority on Portuguese Africa who witnessed many of these events first hand, draws on his own extensive experience in the country as well as the PAIGC archives to provide a detailed and rigorous analysis of the conflict. Though perhaps less well known than the struggles in Angola and Mozambique, the liberation war waged by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) easily ranks alongside those conflicts as an example of an African independence movement triumphing against overwhelming odds. No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky stands as a key text in the history of the eleven-year struggle against Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.