Chico Buarque

Photographic model turned minor actor Benjamin Zambraia feels mocked by his spurious sort of fame. He is also haunted by Castana Beatriz, a love he lost 30 years before, but whose double has begun to crop up around town. Could Arieta Muse be Castana's daughter?

"FÖR MIG ÄR DET TIDIGT ÄN. Jag gick och la mig imorse, och genom dörrögat kan jag nu inte avgöra vem det är som ringer på. Jag är yrvaken och undrar vad en typ i kostym och slips vill mig. Ansiktet ser svullet ut härinifrån. Det måste vara viktigt, för jag hörde killen ringa på flera gånger; en gång på väg mot dörren och åtminstone tre gånger i sömnen. Jag rättar in ögat vid linsen och tycker mig känna igen honom från någon tidigare trasslig tillvaro, eller så halvsov jag när jag kom fram till dörren och blandar ihop honom med någon ur en dröm. Han har inte rakat sig. Det kan hända att jag har träffat honom renrakad tidigare, men nu är skägget så pass tjockt att det maskerar. Kostymen och slipsen oroar mig också. Jag känner inte många som klär sig så, och än mindre någon i den utstyrseln med håret till axlarna."

«Una eleg a a la soledad, al dolor, a los malentendidos er ticos (y literarios) y a la nostalgia por todo lo que no se dice. Lila Azam Zanganeh Tras haber sido galardonado con el prestigioso Premio Cames por su trayectoria literaria, el celebrado compositor, m sico, poeta y novelista Chico Buarque nos invita a asomarnos a la vida de Manuel Duarte, un escritor de novela hist rica que tuvo su momento de gloria en la d cada de los noventa y que ahora, con la cuenta bancaria en n meros rojos, intenta escribir en vano el libro que debe a sus editores. Mientras disfruta de sus paseos peripat ticos por las elegantes calles de su barrio, Leblon, o visita la favela vecina de Viridal, recorremos un R o de Janeiro que, de una forma cada vez m s patente, se doblega y sangra bajo el l tigo de la injusticia social y econ mica: un m sico negro acribillado por la polic a, un decreto que flexibiliza el uso de armas de fuego, una manifestaci n reprimida violentamente o lujosas fiestas de la nueva casta pol tica inundan los peri dicos. Buarque nos brinda, a modo de rompecabezas y desde m ltiples voces y perspectivas, su novela m s punzante y nos asoma, con su habitual mirada ir nica, a los devaneos tragic micos de un escritor en crisis y a la memoria fragmentada del enloquecido Brasil de Bolsonaro. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION "This is an elegy to solitude, to pain, to erotic (and literary) misunderstandings, and to the longing over all we do not say." --Lila Azam Zanganeh After being honored with the prestigious Cam es Prize for his literary career, famous composer, musician, poet, and novelist Chico Buarque invites us to look into Manuel Duarte's life. He is a historical novelist who had his moment of glory back in the nineties and now, with a bank account in the red, tries vainly to write the book his publishers expect. While enjoying his peripatetic walks on the elegant streets of his neighborhood, Leblon, or visiting Viridal, a neighboring favela, we journey through Rio de Janeiro, a city that bends and bleeds, in an increasingly apparent way, under the lash of social and economic injustice. A black musician shot dead by police, a decree that facilitates the use of firearms, a violently repressed protest rally, or lavish parties in the new political circle are the kind of stories that flood the newspapers. In the form of a puzzle with multiple voices and perspectives, Buarque gives us his most poignant novel yet and shows us, with his usual ironic look, the tragicomic dalliances of a writer in crisis and the fragmented memory of the maddened Brazil under Bolsonaro.

An uproarious novel about a man's often sordid, lifelong search for his possibly imaginary half brother My German Brother is the renowned Brazilian musician and author Chico Buarque's attempt to reconstruct through fiction his obsessive lifelong search for a lost sibling. In 1960s S o Paulo, the teenage car thief and budding lothario Ciccio comes home each day to a house stuffed with books. His father, a journalist and scholar, has spent his life acquiring them; his mother, by necessity, has spent her life organizing this library. Ciccio feels like an afterthought in his own family, largely left to his own criminal devices. Forbidden to touch any of these books, Ciccio sneaks off with The Golden Bough one day to discover a decades-old letter hidden inside. The letter reveals an illicit affair his father carried on while posted in Nazi-era Berlin, an affair that resulted in the birth of a baby boy. The child, along with his mother, vanished into the chaos of the Second World War. Ciccio develops a fascination for his mysterious German brother: a fixation that becomes a mission, both comical and courageous, pursued over decades, through dead ends and embarrassments and cases of mistaken identity. My German Brother is the project of a lifetime, combining what was, what might have been, and outright fabrication, all in order to arrive at the truth.

Jose Costa has just attended the Anonymous Writers Congress in Istanbul and is on his way back to Rio when a bomb scare on his flight forces him to spend a night in Budapest. Fascinated by the Hungarian language - he is after all a ghost writer by trade and a man who lives by language - he spends the night watching television, trying to pick out words in this tongue, 'the only one the devil respects'. In charting Jose's life we enter a storytelling labyrinth, as his myth-making, love-making and essays into another culture become mired in the world where celebrities make reputations and fortunes from the writing of others, and where the reader is not sure what language, or what reality, is being offered

The narrator of this tale is haunted by nostalgia for the places of his childhood set in a city that can only be Rio de Janeiro. A drop-out from the privileged world of luxury beach apartments and sybaritic obsessions, he has entered the 'other' Brazil of wretched poverty and petty crime.