A domestic worker confronts her rural origins against the backdrop of the 2013 political protests in Rio. As demonstrators rail against President Dilma Rousseff’s government, this aging woman—a cook—listens to the endless chatter of a professor who tries to account for her life’s hardships and the current shortcomings of Brazilian democracy. They embark on a journey into politics highlighted by her supposed connection to Brazil’s first dictator Floriano Peixoto, known as the Iron Marshal. The cook obsesses over her supposed relative and President Rousseff’s recent speeches. Walking the same streets Floriano had walked a century earlier she and the professor contemplate an eerie parallel between the beginnings of Brazilian democracy and its current challenges.

Blending fact and fiction, O marechal de costas (“The Iron Marshal”) depicts these challenges in a complex and engaging panorama of Brazilian politics over the past 120 years.

A few days before retiring, Jurandir travels to Recife to settle a labour issue and ends up committed to a psychiatric hospital. Reporting on his dreams while remembering his affair with a colleague and the tragic death of his son André, a different perspective on his past life starts to unfold. O sonâmbulo amador (“The Amateur Sleepwalker”) chronicles the adventures of a disenchanted, humble protagonist, revealing the wounds of his past as in a jigsaw. The novel won the Telecom Prize 2013.

His debut novel Nosso grão mais fino (“Our Finer Grain”) is a lyrical portrait of family decadence and love gone wrong in twentieth-century Brazil. Ana and Vicente recall the ending of their affair and how it started back on their families’ sugarcane plantation. Together, they try to make sense of Ana’s father’s suicide during a Zeppelin trip, which changed their lives: Ana married Vicente’s uncle and made Vicente her secret lover, thus leaving both men in limbo. But while Vicente prefers the uncanny presence of past possibilities, Ana holds on to real life. The innovative unfolding of the narrative and the dense atmosphere make this novel the new literary discovery from Brazil.