Chico Buarque

"An uproarious novel about a Brazilian man's often sordid, lifelong search for a possibly imaginary half-brother, born in Germany just before the Second World War"-- "In 1960s São Paulo, teenage car thief and budding lothario Ciccio comes home each day to a house stuffed with books. His father, a scholar, cold and aloof, has spent his life acquiring them; his mother, by necessity, has spent her life organizing them. Ciccio himself feels like an...

Centenarian Eulalio Assumpcao has reached the end of his long life. From his modest bed in a Rio public hospital, as his mind falters, he grandly recounts his past to passing nurses, his visiting daughter and the whitewashed ceiling. His eccentric stories are seemingly nothing more than the ramblings of a dying man, yet as he overlaps each confused memory, they begin to coalesce into a brilliant and bitter eulogy for himself and for Brazil. Charting...