Don't judge Brazil by its cover

Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon

Jules Verne (1881)

Long before football and samba typified the dynamic, vibrant excitement Brazil exudes, the father of science fiction had discovered adventure in the country’s lush Amazon rainforest. Brazilian rancher Joan Garral owns a flourishing plantation by the Peruvian border with his family, whom he loves unconditionally. With his daughter’s impending marriage to a Brazilian army surgeon, the family travels downriver, scaling the eponymous 800 leagues of the Amazon on a timber raft. But Garral has a dark past that threatens to catch up with him. This edge-of-the-seat thriller is packed with vivid imagery and details and trivia about the rainforests, but also serves as a gripping swashbuckling tale thanks to the dastardly villain, Torres.

The Violent Land

Jorge Amado (1945)

The perfectly bittersweet cocoa of Brazil has its foundation in a bitter past of land-grabbing, turf wars, vendettas and bloodshed. Having grown up on a plantation in Bahia state himself, Amado, Brazil’s most popular modern storyteller, celebrates his stomping ground through a melodramatic conflict between the powerful Badaros and Silveria families fighting over lush forest suitable for cocoa plantations while navigating treachery, love and greed.

Amado masterfully fleshes out the culture and lifestyle of the feudal north-east of the country, holding a mirror to social injustice, poverty, fierce ambition and passion. The story, told in colloquial, rollicking language throughout, has been adapted for the stage, TV and radio and makes for a realistic and riveting page-turner.

The Hour of the Star Clarice

Lispector (1975)

One of Brazil’s renowned female literary heavyweights, Lispector’s final work is touted as her masterpiece. Macabea, 19, is a typist ekeing out a living in the unforgiving slums of Rio de Janeiro, having run away from a wicked-stepmother-like aunt in the rural backlands.

Illiterate and unhealthy, there’s not much to Macabea’s pathetic existence, according to the unreliable narrator, Rodrigo SM, a cosmopolitan, well-off aspiring writer. But Macabea finds joy in the little things such as drinking a Coca-Cola and painting her nails. In her acceptance of the bleakness of her life, Macabea becomes an unlikely proponent of hope. Existentially poetic and darkly humorous, this novella is Lispector’s ode to the tenacity of humanity.

The Five Seasons of Love

Joao Almino (2008)

Recipient of the Casa de Las Americas literary award, Almino’s novel is a work of art, envisioning through words the millennial disillusionment of Brasilia’s denizens with both the hopes they had for themselves and those they had for this capital city designed as a modernist wonder. Fulfilling a pact made during college, 55-yearold Ana Kauffman is preparing for a reunion with her friends on January 1, 2000.

Ironically nicknamed ‘The Useless’, Ana and her pals were socially active in their heyday, championing relevant causes like justice and economic equality in 1970s’ Brazil. The lyrical yet staccato stream-of-consciousness narrative offers a peek into the transformative nature of love, life and dreams in Brasilia.

Hotel Brasil

Frei Betto (2014)

The derelict Rio de Janiero family hotel – Hotel Brasil – is the scene of a heinous murder of diamond merchant Seu Marcal, which is being investigated by police head Delegado Olinto Del Bosco. Soon other deaths follow. Political activist and first-time writer Betto uses the perfect guise of the classic whodunit roman noir to dissect modern Brazilian society. Del Bosco’s thorough interviews of the marginalised characters who constitute the hotel’s oddball band of residents – Rosaura, the aspiring telenovela actress, Diamante the nightclub singer, and retired professor Candido, who immerses himself in helping Rio’s favela kids – are all perfect examples of Betto’s razorsharp perception of present-day Rio. It’s simultaneously a morbid and enlightening read.

There Were Many Horses

Luiz Ruffato (2001)

This rambling tome is a homage to the city of São Paulo by exjournalist Ruffato. A compilation of 70 disjointed narratives that take place on the same day – September 5, 2000 – in the city, Ruffato delineates the diverse social classes, issues, and ideas that define São Paulo through multiple literary styles.

While the book’s confusing structure is Ruffato’s attempt at reflecting the untameable complexity, breadth and depth of the area, his journalistic eye for detail brings to life the salad-bowl city as a living and breathing entity.

The State of Wonder

Ann Patchett (2011)

American Ann Patchett is a foreign author entranced by the mysterious beauty of the Amazon forest. In this New York Times bestseller, pharmacologist Marina Singh travels to Manaus, Brazil, on behalf of her company, Vogel, to bring back information on a miraculous drug being researched by Dr Swenson who lives with the indigenous Lakashi tribe.

Marina’s trip has layered motives, chief of which is investigating the death of her colleague, Anders Eckman, who’d gone before her to reconnect with Dr Swenson (who was also her mentor) and unearth the secrets of the Lakashi tribe.

This tense jungle adventure is a pensive exploration of the lasting nature student-teacher relationships. It is also populated with strong female characters.

City of God

Paulo Lins (1997)

Lins’ gripping, semi-autobiographical novel set in Rio’s seedy shanty town, Cidade de Deus (City of God), is groundbreaking in its depiction of the lowest rungs of society ravaged by crime, poverty and corruption.

The novel follows the lives of three delinquent boys and the descent into anarchy of the community of Cicade de Deus, which had started as a housing project for flood survivors. Rampant with tripping, musical lexicon of  Rio slang and colourful, yet brutal snapshots of the city’s underbelly, it was the Oscarnominated (2002) film-adaption that finally made an English translation of this book available in 2006.

The Seamstress

Frances de Pontes Peebles (2008)

For Emilia and Luiza – sisters trained as seamstresses by their aunt – living in the rural backcountry of northeastern Brazil in the 1920s and 30s is a far cry from the hedonistic fun typical of the Jazz Age. The sisters yearn to escape the lawless strife between land barons and outlaws in their town. But fate has different futures lined up for the sisters, who are separated when the group of cangaceiros (outlaws) abduct Luiza and, soon after, Emilia finds herself married to a wealthy man. Will the physical and social distance between the sisters mar their love for one another? Based on real-life historical events, Peebles’ debut is a historically poignant tale told through simple language embellished only with exquisite detail on the people, culture and life of the time.

Dom Casmurro

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1899)

Simply put, Machado is to Brazil and Latin American literature what Shakespeare is to English. Considered a master realist with a knack for universalising emotions and problems, Machado’s genius is at its pinnacle in Dom Casmurro – often seen as a Brazilian Othello. It’s written in the narrative voice of an obsessively jealous husband, Bento, who describes the treachery of his wife, Capitu. The evidence he furnishes hangs by a thread, making the story not one just of Capitu’s assumed betrayal, but a dark comedy on the destructive nature of jealousy. A mustread for its fluid poetic Portuguese prose (obviously in translation).