Portuguese reading group, 2018

Two strangers meet on a scorching night in Rio de Janeiro. She is a designer looking for work; he has been contracted to bring a publishing house in decline into the digital age. Happenstance brings our protagonists together in one room, where day after day he narrates his frequent encounters with sex workers. She listens more than she speaks, using her imagination to fill the gaps in the story. One of Brazil’s greatest writers, Elvira Vigna takes this framework and uses it to create a powerful literary game of betrayals and innuendos. Como se Estivéssemos em Palimpsesto de Putas is a novel about relationships, power, lies, and imagination.

First published in 1972, Sombras de reis barbudos, tells the story of a town that welcomes in the Companhia Melhoramentos de Taitara, an enterprise that promises jobs, modernity and progression. Little by little, however, the company imposes a tyrannical routine on the town’s residents. At the time of its publication, Sombras was read as an allegory of Brazil’s military regime.

Four decades on, critics of Jose J. Veiga have cast new light on this author, expanding his reach. Though his writing is influenced by magical realism, his books don’t fit snugly into this category; they explore the world of children and young adults, and yet are much more than just simple coming of age stories.

Now, readers can see for themselves why José J. Veiga is considered one of Brazil’s greatest twentieth century authors.

During a game at school, a kid bangs his head and falls into a coma. When he wakes up, he no longer knows who he is and, as his memories begin to dissolve, there begins what will later become known as O Ano do Grande Branco, or ‘the Year of the Big White’. In the following months, the boy has the intense sensation that the people who are caring for him and feeding him are not his parents. On top of that, the barbiturates prescribed by his doctor begin to affect his reasoning until, little by little, the boy loses all the things an eleven year old is able to hold as certain. With a cast of characters that includes spies, warriors, hunters, and a least one monster, Noite dentro da noite travels through Brazil’s recent history, inserting our own reality into the same kaleidoscope that sets this unusual and extraordinary novel into motion.

The integrity of Oscar’s marriage is threatened by the return of Nelson, his wife’s ex-boyfriend and his former teenage rival. Newly arrived from Acre, he moves into the same building as the couple, in Vila Buarque, near the centre of São Paulo. Caught between paranoia, jealousy, and memories from his adolescence on the beaches of Santos in the 1980s, Oscar wanders around São Paulo, stumbling across wounds from the past and threats of violence that seem to emerge from the streets and penetrate the building he lives in, as well as his mundane, predictable routine. Narrated with ingenuity and precision, Acre submerges the reader in a suffocating, hostile city where prejudice, brutality and decay leap out from every corner.