Tag: Brazil

Advance Review Copy, Fiction, Novella, Translation

Quiet Creature on the Corner by João Gilberto Noll (tr. Adam Morris)

Title:  Quiet Creature on the Corner Author:  João Gilberto Noll Translator:  Adam Morris Publisher: Two Lines Press, San Francisco (2016) ISBN:  978 1 931883 51 1 Quiet Creature on the Corner is a weird tale told from the point of view of an adolescent boy being punished for the rape of a young girl.  The assault occurs in an abandoned lot behind the slum-like apartment building where they both live and the boy describes the … Continue reading Quiet Creature on the Corner by João Gilberto Noll (tr. Adam Morris)

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Fiction, History, Translation

The Last Days by Laurent Seksik, translated from French by Andre Naffis-Sahely

Historical fiction is strange. We approach it with the understanding that what we are reading both is and is not true.  We contract with the writer to accept her interpretation of events without requiring she take on the burden of proof.  The situation become even more complicated when we’re deal with historical figures, versus fictional characters placed in historical settings. For better or worse,  Philippa … Continue reading The Last Days by Laurent Seksik, translated from French by Andre Naffis-Sahely

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Advance Review Copy, Fiction, History, Translation

His Own Man by Edgard Telles Ribeiro, translated from the Portuguese by Kim M. Hastings

It is the late 1960’s and Max is embarking on what will be a remarkable career in the Brazilian Foreign Service. A career that will span some of the most tumultuous decades in Latin American history. Through the coups and purges, the government shifts from left to right and back again, the making & breaking of political alliances – he thrives… Continue reading His Own Man by Edgard Telles Ribeiro, translated from the Portuguese by Kim M. Hastings

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Advance Review Copy, Fiction, Poetry, Translation

All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão, translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry & Stefan Tobler

All Dogs Are Blue is a beautifully nuanced portrayal of mental illness.  Rodrigo de Souza Leão has given us a story set in a Brazilian mental institution which isn’t a caricature of lunacy.  The author does not fall into the familiar stereotypes.  He does not confine his narrator within a prison of horrors.  Nor does Souza Leão romanticize the disease, assigning it the attributes of genius.  … Continue reading All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão, translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry & Stefan Tobler

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Advance Review Copy, Fiction, Translation, Travel

My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec (translated from the Spanish by Margaret B. Carson)

Like the narrator of Sergio Chejfec’s novel My Two Worlds, I am an inveterate walker.  Never to be confused with a hiker, city walkers are an entirely separate category who delight in the organized, the man-made, the carefully choreographed.    We choose “To walk and nothing but.  Not to walk without a destination, as modern characters have been pleased to do, attentive to the novelties … Continue reading My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec (translated from the Spanish by Margaret B. Carson)

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