Scliar is one of the few novelists in Brazil to deal with the topic of Jewish immigrants, as in The One-Man Army (“O exército de um homem só”). He is also a master of short stories, of a fantastic and absurd kind. I’m attracted by the fluid borderline between the literary and the humorous, the real and the absurd. Medicine is another topic that runs through his oeuvre. With considerable humour the author presents the issues of alienation, of religious and ethnic belonging, of the discrepancy between individuality and group identity.  The Woman who wrote the Bible (“A mulher que escreveu a Bíblia”), tells the story about an unattractive girl who becomes one of King Salomon’s wives. As she is the only literate woman, she becomes the king’s historian and tells generations to come the true story of the creation of the world and the glory of King Salomon.

Kafka’s Leopards (“Os leopardos de Kafka”) tells the story of a misunderstanding and its expansive and entertaining consequences. In 1916, in a Europe devastated by the First World War and on the threshold of the Bolshevik Revolution, the young Russian Benjamin travels to Prague on a secret mission. When he is mistakenly handed The Temple Leopards by Franz Kafka, he believes it to be a coded message. The result is a truly Kafkaesque situation.

In The Centaur in the Garden (“O centauro no jardim”), Moacyr Scliar humorously links fairy-tale, myth and the banality of everyday life in a bourgeois society. Guedali Tartakovsky, son of Jewish immigrants in Brazil, sees the light of day in 1935 in the form of a centaur – half man, half horse. He spends his youth concealed from the outside world by his caring family. He reads a lot and completes correspondence courses. When he reaches puberty he is drawn to the outside world, though he realises that relations with women are bound to be difficult. He becomes a circus performer and by chance gets to know the female centaur Tita. The two of them decide to undergo an operation in a Moroccan clinic to be given full human form. They succeed in becoming integrated into society; Guedali makes his living as a business man. Yet even after the surgical intervention, he still longs for his former appearance again. Here fairy-tale, myth and the banality of everyday life in a bourgeois society are humorously linked. Scliar focuses on the diversity of the ethnic groups in Brazil (Tita is half Indian) and the identity crisis, the inner turmoil of all those who do not correspond to the norm. For the author, assimilation always signifies loss.

The Hidden Diamond (“Na noite do ventre, o diamante”): The family Nussembaum lives in a remote village in Russia. For Sabbath each week, Esther, mother of two sons, puts on a precious diamond ring in her humble little house. And what a diamond it is! It accompanies the reader throughout the centuries up to the present. First it is brought from Brazil to Amsterdam by a neo Christian persecuted by the Inquisition and then it is handed down from generation to generation. In the beginning of the 20th Century the family Nussembaum emigrates to Brazil. In order to bring the ring safely across the border, one of the sons swallows the ring, the other, Gregório, swallows the stone. The family soon regains the ring, the stone, however, has implanted itself in Gregório’s bowels. Will it ever be found again? The doyen Scliar once again combines occurrences bordering the absurd with historical facts and lets the reader take part in an entertaining game amid reality and fiction.

The Temple Hawkers (“Os vendilhões do templo”): The famous Bible scene in which Jesus furiously drives the merchants from the Temple provides Scliar with the idea for his new novel, which is set in three different eras and takes a good-humoured look into the relation between religion and commerce. The author starts off with the story of a man from 33 AD, a skilled and inventive salesman. The second story takes place in the 17th century in the south of Brazil, in one of the Jesuits’ missionary outposts. The third and final part of the novel is set in the same place, where a small town has been built on the site of the old mission. The year is 1997. The narrator is a broke, melancholy journalist. As in his previous works, the author looks back to tell the present through the past. And the questions that are repeatedly raised in the course of the novel do not apply to Brazil alone: What is the relationship between religion and commerce? How can ideals survive reality? Scliar once again seduces the reader in this funny, ironic novel as the masterful storyteller he is.

A Manual on Solitary Passion (“Manual da paixão solitária”): At a congress of biblical studies held in a Brazilian city, Harold Veiga de Assis, a famous historian and professor at a prestigious North American university, presents a paper that is based on a manuscript discovered only a few months previously in a cave in Israel that refers to a short passage in the Book of Genesis. It tells the story of patriarch Judah and how his decision to increase his clan leads to the loss of his children. Two of his sons, Er and Onan marry, one after the other, the young and beautiful Tamar, but neither of them manage to father any children. The first son, Er, is punished by God with death for his inability to procreate. Traditionally the Second son, Onan, is responsible for taking the place of his older brother. He, however, refuses to carry out this role since he considers it a humiliation and would rather spill his semen on the ground, than produce any children with her. God punishes him too, with death. Judah’s youngest son Shelah is the only one left and he does not want to him to go to Tamar for fear of losing him too. Dishonoured and deprived of children, Tamar plays a trick that goes down in history. A masterly raconteur, Veiga de Assis manages to capture the attention of the congress members, which prompts Diana Medeiros, also a historian and university professor and one of Veiga de Assis’ old students, to offer her interpretation of the biblical text, which in turn unleashes a heated debate. The antagonism that arises between the two professors gives way to a modern debate on the biblical facts being presented, which at the end of the day are really explorations into the fundamental feelings of human beings.

As in his previous novels, “The Woman who wrote the Bible” and “The Temple Hawkers”, Scliar uses a biblical theme to prompt the narration of two very different points of view. Typically amusing and thought provoking, he addresses the basic emotions of every human being – love, hate, envy, jealousy – all of which have played a part in every human story throughout the ages.