Orphans of Eldorado

by Milton Hatoum, John Gledson (Translator)

Overview

The setting for this magical fable is Eldorado, the Enchanted city that inhabited the fevered dreams of European navigators and conquistadors, but eluded all attempts to find it on the map. Some have linked it to Manaus in the Amazon Basin, and it is here that Arminto Cordovil lives with his father Amando in a white mansion.

Theirs is a relationship full of passion and limitless ambition. Separating father and son is a remarkable cast of characters, from Angelina, the dead mother, to Denisio, the infernal boatman, and at the centre, Dinaura, a girl who betwitches Arminto and dreams of Eldorado...

Orphans of Eldorado is a rich and magical fable that beautifully captures the atmosphere of the steamy, lush Amazonian world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847673008
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	02/18/2010
Series:	Canongate Myths Series , #8
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born in Manaus in 1952, Milton Hatoum's first novel, TALE OF A CERTAIN ORIENT, was published in 1989, followed by THE BROTHERS in 2000. Both won the prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel. ASHES OF THE AMAZON (2005) was also awarded the Jabuti Prize, as well as the Portugal Telecom Prize for literature.

Editorial Reviews

Inspired by a comingling of the myth of Eldorado and the Amazonian legend of the Enchanted City, a mystical civilization at the bottom of the deepest river, Brazilian writer Hatoum's lushly realized newest (after Ashes of the Amazon) is set in early 20th century Brazil and tells the story of Arminto Cordovil and his search for a lost love. Though Arminto enjoyed a quiet life in his quaint hometown of Vila Bela, a fling with a trusted family servant led his father, a wealthy shipping magnate, to exile him; now in bustling Manaus, Arminto is shocked to find his father has died and left an enormous inheritance to his estranged son. At the funeral, Arminto becomes enamored with the mysterious Dinaura, an orphan living with Carmelite nuns. But just as their romance comes to life, Dinaura disappears, and Arminto must discover whether she has been taken to the Enchanted City, or otherwise run into the wilderness. Despite a keenly rendered sense of place, Hatoum's novella suffers from an identity crisis—the book lacks the character and plot development of traditional fiction, as well as the wonder and grandiosity of myth. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Clear in each particular but tantalisingly elusive in its overall meaning, Orphans of Eldorado does what every good telling of a myth should.

Financial Times - Adrian Turpin

A profoundly textured work that is sophisticated, elegant, unusually vivid and intriguingly convincing.

Irish Times on Hatoum's TALE OF A CERTAIN ORIENT

Delicately crafted and dreamlike.

Financial Times

The story is universal, though sensuously anchored in Manaus, gripping in both its particular twists and its tragic inevitability, it is a human story told in a world made real by a very good writer

A.S. Byatt on Hatoum's THE BROTHERS

"With his erudition and marshalling of historical detail, Hatoum compressed an epic into a novella."  —Times Literary Supplement

"Lushly realized."  —Publishers Weekly online 

From the Publisher