'I am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who has written and is now deceased, but in the sense of one who had died and is now writing.' So begins the posthumous memoir of Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian. Though the grave has given Cubas the distance to examine his rather undistinguished life, it has not dampened his sense of humor. In the tradition of Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shamdy, Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history.


The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

Announcing a major literary event: here is the first translation into English of a landmark precursor of Latin American magical realism, which has informed the work of contemporary writers from Garcia Marquez to Salman Rushdie. Macunaima, first published in Portuguese in 1928, and one of the masterworks of Brazilian literature, is a comic folkloric rhapsody (call it a novel if you really want) about the adventures of a popular hero whose fate is intended to define the national character of Brazil.

"Inventive, blessedly unsentimental," as Kirkus Reviews has it, and incorporating and interpreting the rich exotic myths and legends of Brazil, Macunaima traces the hero's quest for a magic charm, a gift from the gods, that he lost by transgressing the mores of his culture. Born in the heart of the darkness of the jungle, Macunaima is a complex of contradictory traits (he is, of course, "a hero without a character"), and can at will magically change his age, his race, his geographic location, to suit his purposes and overcome obstacles. Dramatizing aspects of Brazil in transition (multiracial, Indian versus European, rural versus urban life), Macunaima undergoes sometimes hilarious, sometimes grotesque transformations until his final annihilation and apotheosis as the Great Bear constellation in the heavens.

Macunaíma

Dom Casmurro é a alcunha de Bento Santiago, que, velho e só, desvela as suas memórias. Uma promessa da mãe, traça-lhe o destino como padre, mas Bento Santiago apaixonado, abandona o seminário. Estuda Direito e casa-se com o seu grande amor, mas o ciúme e a desconfiança adensam-se. Suspeita que não é o pai biológico do filho do casal, Ezequiel, mas sim o seu grande amigo Escobar.

Dom Casmurro

Lively reminiscences of bandit warfare in the sertao, the still primitive Brazilian back country, told by a wise, retired outlaw chief. ~Worldcat.org

Grande Sertão: Veredas (Portuguese for "Great Backlands: Tracks"; English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) is a novel published in 1956 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa.

The original title refers to the veredas - small paths through wetlands usually located at higher altitudes characterized by the presence of grasses and buritizais, groups of the buriti palm-tree (Mauritia flexuosa), that criss-cross the Sertão region in northern Minas Gerais, Southeast Brazil - as a labyrinthine net where an outsider can easily get lost, and where there is no single way to a certain place, since all paths interconnect in such a way that any road can lead anywhere. The English title refers to a later episode in the book involving an attempt to make a deal with the Devil. Most of the book's spirit is however lost in translation, as the Portuguese original is written in a register that is both archaic and colloquial, making it a very difficult book to translate. The combination of its size, linguistic oddness and polemic themes caused a shock when it was published, but now it is considered one of the most important novels of South American literature.
In a 2002 poll of 100 noted writers conducted by Norwegian Book Clubs, the book was named among the top 100 books of all time.

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

Living by their wits in the steamy slums of Bahia, a gang of orphans and runaways, led by fifteen-year-old "Bullet," spend their time stealing from Brazil's rich and privileged until public outcry demands their capture.

Captains of the Sands

A vivid chronicle of the solitary life of a peasant family in a harsh and unforgiving land, austerely told by a classic Brazilian writer.

Barren Lives

Neste romance José de Alencar faz uma alegoria da fundação do Ceará, resultando em uma obra essencial do indianismo. A potiguara Iracema, a 'virgem dos lábios de mel', encontra nas florestas da orla cearense o português Martim. É o início de um conturbado amor proibido que revela, com lirismo e aventura, a contradição e o embate entre civilizações.

Iracema

Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and soul-stirring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried near the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles in his path. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.



"Illustration: Jim Tierney"

The Alchemist

"Near to the Wild Heart" is Clarice Lispector's first novel, written from March to November 1942 and published around her twenty-third birthday. The novel, written in a stream-of-consciousness style reminiscent of the English-language Modernists, centers around the childhood and early adulthood of a character named Joana, who bears strong resemblance to her author: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi", Lispector said, quoting Flaubert, when asked about the similarities. The book, particularly its revolutionary language, brought its young, unknown creator to great prominence in Brazilian letters and earned her the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize.

Joana, a young woman very much in the mode of existential contemporaries like Camus and Sartre, ponders the meaning of life, the freedom to be one's self, and the purpose of existence. "Near to the Wild Heart" does not have a conventional narrative plot. It instead recounts flashes from the life of Joana, between her present, as a young woman, and her early childhood. These focus, like most of Lispector's works, on interior, emotional states of mind.

Near to the Wild Heart

Se O Cortiço é dos romances mais contundentes da literatura brasileira, este volume possui atributos que o convertem na melhor edição do clássico de Aluísio Azevedo. Além de texto estabelecido conforme a última edição em vida do autor, contém iconografia histórica e notas de rodapé por Leila Guenther. O ensaio de apresentação foi escrito por Paulo Franchetti, que, revisando noções consagradas, oferece argumentos para uma nova leitura do romance.

O Cortiço

Clássico da literatura brasileira, este texto de Machado de Assis continua sendo, cento e trinta anos depois de sua publicação original, uma das mais devastadoras observações sobre a insanidade a que pode chegar a ciência. Tão palpitante quanto de leitura prazerosa, O alienista é uma dessas joias da ficção da literatura mundial.
Médico, Simão Bacamarte passa a se interessar pela psiquiatria, iniciando um estudo sobre a loucura em Itaguaí, onde funda a Casa Verde - um típico hospício oitocentista -, arregimentando cobaias humanas para seus experimentos. O que se segue é uma história surpreendente e atual em seu debate sobre desvios e normalidade, loucura e razão.

O Alienista

One bright spring day in 1925, Gabriela arrives from the poverty-stricken backwoods of Brazil to the lively seaside port of Ilhéus amid a flock of filthy migrant workers. Though wearing rags and covered in dirt, she attracts the attention of Nacib, a cafe owner, who is in desperate need of a new cook. So dire is his situation that he hires the disheveled girl. The savvy young woman quickly proves to be an excellent chef and—once well-scrubbed and decently dressed—an eye-catching beauty. Nacib quickly finds himself the owner of the most prosperous business in town—and the employer of its most sought-after woman.

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon

Considerado el mayor escritor brasileño del siglo XX y uno de los grandes renovadores de la literatura moderna universal, João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967) es comparado con Proust, Joyce y Borges. Este es su primer libro, que se compone de nueve extensos relatos. "Sagarana" lleva alrededor de sesenta ediciones en portugués: la presente es la primera en lengua castellana. Con este libro, Adriana Hidalgo editora comienza el proceso de rescate de un autor clave de la literatura internacional, que continuará en 2008 con la reedición de la novela "El gran sertón: veredas", obra fundamental en la producción de Guimaraes.

Sagarana

This rarefied novel adopts the form of the interior monologue characteristic of Lispector's (1925-1977) oeuvre. A woman sits by the open window of her Brazilian beachfront studio, writing a long letter to someone no more specific than "you." She parries with language (which is "only words which live off sound") and is wholly consumed with problems of epistemology: "I want to die with life." A painter, she struggles as well to recreate the world around her: "On certain nights, instead of black, the sky seems to be an intense indigo blue, a color I've painted on glass." When she listens to music, she says, "I rest my hand lightly on the turntable and my hand vibrates, spreading waves through my whole body." While the narrator's self-consciousness ("And if I say 'I,' it's because I don't dare say 'you,' or 'we,' or 'a person.' I'm limited to the humble act of self-personalization through reducing myself, but I am the 'you-are.' ") and diction ("the ultimate substratum in the domain of reality") may strike some readers as academic, others will appreciate the challenges of Lispector's philosophical investigations. 
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Stream of Life

Aficionados of South American fiction as well as literary critics will welcome this posthumous translation of a nearly plotless novel by one of Brazil's foremost writers. Availing herself of a single character, Lispector transforms a banal situation—a woman at home, alone—into an amphitheater for philosophical investigations. The first-person narration jousts with language, playfully but forcefully examining the ambiguous nature of words, with results ranging from the profound to the pretentious: "Prehuman divine life is a life of singeing nowness" or "The world interdepended with me, and I am not understanding what I say, never! never again shall I understand what I say. For how will I be able to speak without the word lying for me?" These linguistic games frame existential and experiential crises that Lispector savors and overcomes. Although this idiosyncratic novel will not have wider appeal, those with academic or markedly erudite tastes should find much to savour.

The Passion According to G.H.

"The Hour of the Star", Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marylin Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator--edge of despair to edge of despair--and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last novel she takes readers close to the true mystery of life, and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.

The Hour of the Star

Esau and Jacob is the last of Machado de Assis's four great novels. At one level it is the story of twin brothers in love with the same woman and her inability to choose between them. At another level, it is the story of Brazil itself, caught between the traditional and the modern, and between the monarchical and republican ideals. Instead of a heroic biblical fable, Machado de Assis gives us a story of the petty squabbles, conflicting ambitions, doubts, and insecurities that are part of the human condition.


Esau and Jacob

When the mad philosopher Quincas Borba dies, he leaves to his friend Rubiao the entirety of his wealth and property, with a single stipulation: Rubiao must take care of Quincas Borba's dog, who is also named Quincas Borba, and who may indeed have assumed the soul of the dead philosopher. Flush with his newfound wealth, Rubiao heads for Rio de Janeiro and plunges headlong into a world where fantasy and reality become increasingly difficult to keep separate. Brilliantly translated by Gregory Rabassa, Quincas Borba is a masterful satire not only on life in Imperial Brazil but the human condition itself.

Quincas Borba

Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo (1831-1852), escritor e poeta romântico, foi em tudo coerente com a arrebatada opção estética (o romantismo) que fez: genial, culto, precoce, construiu uma obra pequena, porém clássica, dentro da língua portuguesa e morreu de tuberculose aos vinte e um anos incompletos. Aos 10 anos já falava inglês, francês e latim. Cursou a faculdade de Direito em São Paulo e teve praticamente toda a sua obra publicada após a sua morte. Como escritor brilhante que foi e poeta original e talentoso, a qualidade da sua obra surpreende pela precocidade com que foi concebida. Discípulo dos românticos europeus, como Byron, Hoffmann e Shelley, seus textos refletem o ambiente de sua época, onde a literatura estava impregnada de pessimismo, ceticismo, morbidez e pressentimento da morte. Este Rimbaud tropical escreveu Noite na taverna, um clássico composto de sete contos ímpares na literatura de língua portuguesa, a genial coletânea de seus poemas, Lira dos 20 Anos, e outros textos como Cartas, a série humorística Spleen e Charutos, Poema do Frade, O Conde Lopo, entre outras obras. Discursos, 1849, foi seu único texto publicado em vida.

Contos:

"Uma noite do século"
"Solfieri"
"Bertram"
"Gennaro"
"Claudius Hermann"
"Johann"
"Último beijo de amor"

Noite na Taverna

In The Garden of Delights, a Tunisian restaurant in Sao Paulo, Guedali Tartakovsky celebrates his 38th birthday--that splendid age of newfound maturity and comprehension. It is only now that Guedali is able to revel in memories of glorious times past. Born a centaur--a mythical creature half-horse, half-human--Guedali describes his family's flight from Russia to Brazil at the turn of the century, the shock of his birth, the loving care of his parents and his sisters, the mounting resentment of his brother, and his extraordinary experiences being raised as a Jew. Torn between his deep attachment to his family and his natural instincts to roam wild, Guedali searches for a place where his startling duality is accepted and embraced. He joins a traveling circus, only to be discovered in an intimate encounter with the lion tamer. Guedali finds himself on the run again, and meets his life companion--a centauress. Together they embark on a journey to create a place where the human and the wild can live in peaceful coexistence.

The Centaur in the Garden

Most widely admired for his short fiction, The Taker and Other Stories is Fonseca's first collection to appear in English translation, and it ranges across his oeuvre, exploring the sights and sounds of the modern landscape of Rio de Janeiro. 

Rubem Fonseca's Rio is a city at war, a city whose vast disparities- in wealth, social standing, and prestige- are untenable. In the stories of The Taker, rich and poor live in an uneasy equilibrium, where only overwhelming force can maintain order, and violence and deception are essential tools of survival.

The Taker and Other Stories

Urupês é um livro de contos, escrito por Monteiro Lobato e publicado em 1918.

Urupês é considerado a obra-prima de Monteiro Lobato, e é um clássico da literatura brasileira. O livro é composto por 14 contos, que mostram a vida quotidiana e mundana do caboclo do interior de São Paulo, através de suas crenças, costumes e tradições. Têm, geralmente, um final trágico e inesperado.

Os contos do livro são:

Os faroleiros
O engraçado arrependido
A colcha de retalhos
A vingança da peroba
Um suplício moderno
Meu conto de Maupassant
"Pollice Verso"
Bucólica
O mata-pau
Bocatorta
O comprador de fazendas
O estigma
Velha Praga
Urupês

Urupês

The War of the End of the World is one of the great modern historical novels. Inspired by a real episode in Brazilian history, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the unforgettable story of an apocalyptic movement, led by a mysterious prophet, in which prostitutes, beggars and bandits establish Canudos, a new republic, a libertarian paradise.

~publisher's web site

The War of the End of the World

Combining travel, history, culture, and his own memories of twenty years of Brazilian life, the author of "Midnight in Sicily" delves into the past and present of a country that affects our imagination like few other places on earth

From his own near murder in Rio at the hands of an intruder twenty years ago and continuing through the recent slaying of a former president's bagman who looted the country of more than a billion dollars, violent death poses a steady threat in Peter Robb's brilliant travelogue through modern-day Brazil. It's not death, however, that leaves a lasting impression but the exuberant life force that emanates from the country and its people.
Seeking to understand how extreme danger and passion can coexist in a nation for centuries, Robb travels from the cobalt blue shores of southern Brazil to the arid mountains of the northeast recounting four centuries of Brazilian history from the days of slavery to the recent election of the country's first working-class president. Much more than a journey through history, Robb renders in vivid detail the intoxicating pleasures of the food, music, and climate of the country and references the work of Brazil's greatest writers to depict a culture unlike any other.
With a stunning prose style and an endlessly inquisitive intellect, Robb builds layer upon layer of history, culture, and personal reminiscence into a deeply personal, impressionistic portrait of a nation. The reader emerges from "A Death in Brazil" not just with more knowledge about the country but with a sense of having experienced it and with a deep understanding of its turbulent soul.


A Death in Brazil

Alive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed. Thus Ira Levin opens one of the strangest and most masterful novels of his career. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious "Angel of Death"? One man alone must answer these questions and stop the killings—Lieberman, himself aging and thought by some to be losing his grip on reality. At the heart of The Boys from Brazil lies a frightening contemporary nightmare, chilling and all too possible.

The Boys from Brazil

Euclides da Cunha's classic account of the brutal campaigns against religious mystic Antonio Conselheiro has been called the Bible of Brazilian nationality.

"Euclides da Cunha went on the campaigns [against Conselheiro] as a journalist and what he returned with and published in 1902 is still unsurpassed in Latin American literature. Cunha is a talent as grand, spacious, entangled with knowledge, curiosity, and bafflement as the country itself. . . . On every page there is a heart of idea, speculation, dramatic observation that tells of a creative mission undertaken, the identity of the nation, and also the creation of a pure and eloquent prose style."—Elizabeth Hardwick, "Bartleby in Manhattan"

Rebellion in the Backlands

In a time of terror for Europe’s monarchs - imprisoned, exiled, executed - Napoleon’s army marched toward Lisbon. Cornered, Prince Regent João had to make the most fraught decision of his life. Protected by the British Navy, he fled to Brazil with his entire family, including his mentally ill mother, most of the nobility, and the entire state apparatus. Thousands made the voyage, but it was no luxury cruise. It took two months in cramped, decrepit ships. Sickness ran rampant. Lice infested some of the vessels, and noble women had to shave their hair and grease their bald heads with antiseptic sulfur. Vermin infested the food, and bacteria contaminated the drinking water. 

No European monarch had ever set foot in the Americas, let alone relocating an entire court there. A week after landing, Prince João opened Brazil’s ports, liberating the colony from a trade monopoly with Portugal. While explorers mapped the burgeoning nation’s distant regions, the prince authorized the construction of roads, the founding of schools, and the creation of factories, raising Brazil to kingdom status in 1815.

Meanwhile, under French control, Portugal was suffering the dire effects of famine and war. Never had the country lost so many people in so little time. But after Napoleon’s fall and over a decade of misery, the Portuguese demanded the return of their king. João sailed back in tears, but because of him Brazil remained whole and powerful. As he left, the last chapter of colonial Brazil drew to a close, setting the stage for the strong, independent nation that we know today, changing the history of the New World forever.

1808: The Flight of the Emperor: How a Weak Prince, a Mad Queen, and the British Navy Tricked Napoleon and Changed the New World

This book offers a rich, dramatic history of this complex country. The authors not only reconstruct the epic story of the nation but follow the shifting byways of food, art, and popular culture; the plights of minorities; and the ups and downs of economic cycles. Drawing on a range of original scholarship in history, anthropology, political science, and economics, Schwarcz and Starling reveal a long process of unfinished social, political, and economic progress and struggle, a story in which the troubled legacy of the mixing of races and postcolonial political dysfunction persist to this day.

Brazil: A Biography

In this hugely praised narrative, New York Times reporter Larry Rohter takes the reader on a lively trip through Brazil's history, culture, and booming economy. Going beyond the popular stereotypes of samba, supermodels, and soccer, he shows us a stunning and varied landscape--from breathtaking tropical beaches to the lush and dangerous Amazon rainforest--and how a complex and vibrant people defy definition. He charts Brazil's amazing jump from a debtor nation to one of the world's fastest growing economies, unravels the myth of Brazil's sexually charged culture, and portrays in vivid color the underbelly of impoverished favelas. With Brazil leading the charge of the Latin American decade, this critically acclaimed history is the authoritative guide to understanding its meteoric rise.

Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed

No nation is as closely identified with the game of soccer as Brazil. For over a century, Brazil's people, politicians, and poets have found in soccer the finest expression of the nation's collective potential. Since the team's dazzling performance in 1938 at the World Cup in France, Brazilian soccer has been revered as an otherworldly blend of the effective and the aesthetic.

"Futebol Nation" is an extraordinary chronicle of a nation that has won the World Cup five times and produced players of miraculous skill, such as Pel', Garrincha, Rivaldo, Zico, Ronaldo, and Ronaldinho. It shows why the phrase "O Jogo Bonito" -- the Beautiful Game -- has justly entered the global lexicon. Yet there is another side to Brazil and its game, one that reflects the harsh sociological realities of the "futebol nation." David Goldblatt explores the grinding poverty that creates a vast pool of hungry players, Brazil's corrupt institutions exemplified by its soccer authorities, and the pervasive violence that has seeped onto the field and into the stands.

"Futebol Nation" illuminates both Brazilian soccer and Brazil itself; its brilliance, its magic, its style, and the fabulous myths that have been constructed around it; as well as its tragedies, its miseries, and its economic and political injustices. It is the story of Brazil told through its chosen national game.

Brazil

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

Machado de Assis

Macunaíma

Mário de Andrade

Dom Casmurro

Machado de Assis

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

João Guimarães Rosa

Captains of the Sands

Jorge Amado

Barren Lives

Graciliano Ramos

Iracema

José de Alencar

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Near to the Wild Heart

Clarice Lispector

O Cortiço

Aluísio Azevedo

O Alienista

Machado de Assis

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon

Jorge Amado

Sagarana

João Guimarães Rosa

The Stream of Life

Clarice Lispector

The Passion According to G.H.

Clarice Lispector

The Hour of the Star

Clarice Lispector

Esau and Jacob

Machado de Assis

Quincas Borba

Machado de Assis

Noite na Taverna

Álvares de Azevedo

The Centaur in the Garden

Moacyr Scliar

The Taker and Other Stories

Rubem Fonseca

Urupês

Monteiro Lobato

The War of the End of the World

Mario Vargas Llosa

A Death in Brazil

Peter Robb

The Boys from Brazil

Ira Levin

Rebellion in the Backlands

Euclides da Cunha

1808: The Flight of the Emperor: How a Weak Prince, a Mad Queen, and the British Navy Tricked Napoleon and Changed the New World

Laurentino Gomes

Brazil: A Biography

Lilia Moritz Schwarcz

Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed

Larry Rohter

Futebol Nation: The Story of Brazil through Soccer

David Goldblatt