5 Great Brazilian Books Everyone Should Read
Dive into the vibrant culture, history, and spirit of Brazil with these 5 Great Brazilian Books Everyone Should Read.
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5 Great Brazilian Books Everyone Should Read
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
When Gabriela came to the Brazilian town of Ilheus, things would never be the same again In 1925, the town’s cacao plantations are flourishing and progress reigns, but Nacib the Arab’s most desperate worry is that his cook has walked out of his bar. He ventures over to the market to hire a migrant worker to help him and comes across a young mulatto girl named Gabriela who is wild and has hair filthy with dust.
But something in her voice makes him take a chance, and it seems he’s not the only man who’s noticed her. Suddenly there is more to think about than everyday concerns: love affairs, murder, banquets, funerals, desire, hatred, vengeance and miracles.
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector
G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white ‘as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed’. There she sees a cockroach – black, dusty, prehistoric – crawling out of the wardrobe and, panicking, slams the door on it. Her irresistible fascination with the dying insect provokes a spiritual crisis, in which she questions her place in the universe and her very identity, propelling her towards an act of shocking transgression.
Clarice Lispector’s spare, deeply disturbing yet luminous novel transforms language into something otherworldly, and is one of her most unsettling and compelling works.
The Alienist by Machado de Assis
Brilliant physician Simão Bacamarte sacrifices a prestigious career to return home and dedicate himself to the budding field of psychology. Bacamarte opens the first asylum in Brazil hoping to crown himself and his hometown with “imperishable laurels.” But the doctor begins to see signs of insanity in more and more of his neighbors. . . .
With dark humor and sparse prose, The Alienist lets the reader ponder who is really crazy.
The Brothers by Milton Hatoum
Set in the great Brazilian port of Manaus during the golden decades of the Rubber Boom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this is the story of identical twin brothers who battle for the love of their mother. It is also a vivid and surprising portrait of a city built over the confluence of two great rivers in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, and the novel itself is full of eddies, dangerous undertows and shifting surface reflections. While recounting the fortunes and trials of this Lebanese immigrant family over many decades,
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.
With Paulo Coelho’s visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people’s lives.
Brazilian Literature unfortunately still has a lack of English translated work, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa is one that would have featured on this list but for a readily available translation.
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