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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.
From A Death in Brazil:
Murders happen anywhere and mine most nearly happened in Rio. Twenty years later only the scar of a small knife wound on my arm reminds me this is a memory and not a dream. The night went on and on like a dream, with a dream's ungraspable logic, or a Brazilian soap's. Details become wonderfully vivid, like the old carving knife with a long curved and darkened blade carelessly left earlier on the kitchen bench of the Copacabana flat, in the moment it was being held at my throat. My Portuguese lost its rudimentary awkwardness and became unreally fluent very fast. Words I never knew that I knew came pouring from my throat. Things flowed with a dream's weightless speed. The danger lay in the speed. A flailing knife blade moves faster than thought. Movement had to be slowed, the heat lowered. It was the one thing I understood. Let nothing happen. Respond to violence, not with violence, speed, and noise, but with ponderous torpidity, envelop each new threat in slowness. The beautiful Portuguese periods began to roll, slowly, slowly, but with what baroque grace, from my amazing tongue. Obtuse fearlessness stayed the hand with the knife, impassive calm put a little wobble in the spin of violence.
| I | Mixed Blood | 3 |
| II | A Cordial Man | 31 |
| III | On the Beach | 55 |
| IV | Parrot Perch | 81 |
| V | Below the Equator | 107 |
| VI | Stuffed Goat | 133 |
| VII | A World Elsewhere | 159 |
| VIII | A Place to Die For | 187 |
| IX | Witnesses | 215 |
| X | A Used Revolver | 241 |
| XI | In Maceio | 265 |
| XII | A Win | 289 |
| Sources and Readings | 309 | |
| A Chronology | 317 |
Anonymous
Posted September 21, 2006
It is hard to review this book as it is hard to characterize it or, for that matter, to wonder what Peter Robb had in mind in writing it. As a travelogue, it is pretty good, giving an accurate sense of the tropical sensuality of Brazil. As a history of recent Brazilian politics, it is so-so, or perhaps already dated, as Robb views current President Lula somewhat messianically while his actual performance has been way short of expectations. As a cautionary tale on the corruption of Collor and Farias it is pretty good, but that story, supposedly the 'front story', instead emerges as the 'backstory' in the book. Thus, the whole is quite muddled, albeit well written. For those knowing zero about Brazil, it is an odd but passable introduction for those who know it better, it is a good addition to their library.
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Overview
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 ...