A jaguar kills a man in the middle of the forest by the Brazilian Atlantic coast, in the heart of the nature reserve Arraial do Sana. Three siblings, Alan, Alex and Betina reunite to organize the funeral of their father, Zé Maria, after his tragic death. Alex, the eldest, arrives by car with Emma, his French wife. He has apparently made something of himself. Alberto, the middle sibling, arrives in women’s clothing and now goes by the name of Betina. The story is told by Alan, the youngest, who claims to be studying medicine in Rio. Actually, he has turned to literature and wants to become an author. In his narrative, he alternately addresses the mother and the siblings.
The recently deceased father was obviously not a saint in his own home, as the title suggests. On the contrary, he was only perceived as a saint outside his own family, in the little town where he lives, was liked by many and, thanks to his knowledge of the forest plants, a respected healer. For his wife Rute, on whom he continuously inflicted violence, and his three children, he was the devil. While the town holds a procession to bid farewell to a beloved resident, Rute and her children go through the complexities of mourning between longing and the marks of oppression.
Home Saint (“Santo de Casa”) touches on deep wounds and exemplifies how much the patriarchal system precariously affects the subjectivity of men themselves.

Boal’s most important work, Theatre of the Oppressed (“O Teatro do Oprimido“), explains the basic idea of this new form of politically and socially motivated acting techniques. Above all, Boal wanted to contribute to diminishing injustice and defend Human Rights. Together with the Forum Theatre system, the Theatre of the Opressed is trying to initiate a democratic process, “using the stage to empower the disempowered”. Acting groups and initiatives worldwide work on the basis of Boal’s methods.

Jogos Para Atores e Não-Atores is a collection of Boal’s most important exercises and games, in which the participants consciously recreate and confront problems such as sexual harrassment, homophobia or racism. After a short introduction to his theory, illustrated with stories and examples of his work with different groups in Europe, Boal describes the exercises he has found most useful, dividing them into body monologues, body dialogues, techniques from Image Theatre and rehearsal techniques. These “gamesercises” can be used by both professional and amateur actors, by teachers and therapists, in political, pedagogical or social areas. Their main aim is to convert the spectator into a spect“actor”, contributing ideas and converting roles. While dealing with problematic topics, it is of great importance to Boal that acting should always be fun, leaving out any negative notions like competition, envy or rivalry.

This classic has already been translated into numerous languages and updated several times, now including over 400 exercises. The latest edition comprises Boal’s experiences with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1997 for the creation of various characters from Hamlet.

O Arco-íris do Desejo is a handbook of exercises split into a theoretical part explaining the basics of Boal’s understanding of theatre, and a practical part presenting some of his newer acting techniques. Starting again from the principle that by acting we can free ourselves from external oppressions we have internalised, Boal’s aim is to reduce inner restraints and inhibitions and to alert a consciousness for the actor’s surroundings and his own person, which might ultimately lead him to change his life. In the exercise The Rainbow of Desire, for instance, a participant is asked to improvise a conflict from his daily life, represented by five different emotions and desires to be expressed with his body. Subsequently, the other participants assume his poses, while the improvisor steps back to see how others perceive him. He then has the chance to reflect on his behaviour and his reactions to others and possibly even change his demeanour. Other exercises are: The Cops in the Head and Their Anti-bodies, The Screen Image and The Image of the Future We Are Afraid Of. O Arco-íris do Desejo is one of the standard works of therapeutic theatre worldwide.

More information on Boal’s acting methods can be found on the homepage of the International Theatre of the Opressed Organisation:

> theatreoftheoppressed.org

> institutoaugustoboal.org

Violence (“Violência”), the new novel by Fernando Bonassi, is a raw and brutal synthesis of Brazil. With irony and precision, its plot and characters portray the political and social violence of a nation built on colonial legacies.
It’s Saturday night when a political advisor receives a writer and his wife, a university professor, at his home. The advisor’s aim in inviting them to dinner is to get the writer’s support for his candidate’s campaign. But an armed robbery surprises everyone and reveals the deepest layers of violence that permeate Brazilian daily life – physical, political, sexual, racial, class, and gender. With a raw and brutal narrative that takes place over a weekend, Violence portrays a Brazil built on slavery, prejudice and social inequality.
The short chapters hiss at the hypocrisies, privileges and vices of the dominant political class; at police corruption and brutality, as well as their vulnerability; at domestic, political and prison racism, from its most subtle manifestation to the one that kills. Once again, Fernando Bonassi constructs a plot that is extremely critical of the current structures of power and control, with a comic narrative and strong cinematographic content, and striking characters that are extremely recognisable to the Brazilian imagination.
Without shying away from the brutalities, complexities and social contradictions, the book concludes a kind of trilogy by the author, which also includes Lust and Degeneration.

Anyone who wants to understand, in depth, Brazil following the military dictatorship, has to read Fernando Bonassi’s coherent and prolific work. Since his first books, in the early 1990s, Bonassi has recorded, in novels and short stories and plays, the various setbacks we have gone through, with the privileged and critical eye of someone who knows Brazilian society in their guts. Possessing an unmistakable voice in contemporary literature, Bonassi has chosen the suburb – the title of one of his most important novels – as the location for his books. This suburb, portrayed in the excellent Lust, published in 2015, and to which he returns here in this magnificent Degeneration (“Degeneração”)– a decadent suburb of São Paulo, like all other Brazilian suburbs, inhabited by a lower middle class that struggles with all weapons at its disposal to survive, harassed by brutality and lack of prospects.
Degeneration is almost a natural unfolding of Lust. In the latter, the author portrayed a family who, believing that access to material goods would guarantee social recognition, sees euphoria turn to violence. In Degeneração, this violence resurfaces even more crudely when we follow the saga of the son of a police informant trying to release his father’s body for cremation, during the weekend in which the election that put the extreme right in power is held. Terrifying metaphor – the inside, the outside, the private, the public – everything flows into the cul-de-sac in which we collectively find ourselves. (Luiz Ruffato)

Fernando Bonassi’s novel Lust (”Luxúria”) gives an account of an unnamed man who, inspired by a glossy magazine and to impress his wife, decides to crown his self-assumed wealth by building a swimming pool – on credit and in the garden of his dwarf-sized house in a social housing area. Little by little, like a chain reaction, the absurd building process exposes not only the drain pipes of the neighbourhood but also the gaping abysms of everyday bourgeois life. In debt, harassed, jobless and driven by his own demons, he tries to kill his dog before he finds a final solution for his family and himself.
Lust is a parable of the nation’s circumstances: the “new Brazilian middle class”, taken completely by surprise by their unexpected wealth, staggers head-on and without any moderation into the entirely foreseeable crisis. In relentlessly sober language, as if set in harshly exposed photographs and bold camera shots, Bonassi meticulously illuminates the lives of his protagonists. A fast-paced, disturbing novel that keeps the reader glued to his seat.

Bonassi – I do not write to entertain, I write to disturb myself and my reader – is unafraid to express, in verbal and written form, how he sees society in his country and the people in his city. His novel Suburb (“Subúrbio”) was one of the very first books to come from and deal with the world of the bleak suburbs which has long since reached the city centres. High walls, electronic barriers are of little use any more. The world of the privileged few can no longer cut itself off. What sort of a world is this, asks Bonassi, which constructs such walls, instead of confronting and combating misery, showing these people a way out. The novel A Sky full of Stars (“Um Céu de Estrelas”) was made into a prize-winning film by Brazilian director Tata Amaral. That he can also be entertaining he demonstrates in the crime story Marital Crimes (“Crimes Conjugais”), an exciting, briskly moving story of big city crime.

The novel Counterevidence (“Prova Contrária”) tells the story of a woman who receives an indemnization from the government since her husband supposedly disappeared after having been tortured by the military regime. One day her husband returns… was he really the political hero his wife had believed him to be?

The Boy Trapped in a Fridge (“O Menino Preso na Geladeira”) has experienced nothing but privation and hollow promises by a corrupt government in a destroyed country. He therefore builds himself a large fully equipped fridge and locks himself in, as to isolate himself from the outside world. After a number of crazy coincidents, however, he suddenly becomes a national anti-hero. This is an absurd story, which seems to take place very far away, in truth, however, portrays a well-known reality.

Antonio Callado’s novel Quarup made him a name beyond Brazil. The title refers to the indigenous Brazilian festival of burning and rebirth of the ancestors. Father Nando, a missionary, is sent to convert the Indios in the Xingú reservation. Galvanized by friends’ accounts, he joins the struggle for liberation of the rural population living in abject poverty in the north-east of Brazil.

When Quarup was published in 1967, Brazil had been under a military dictatorship, with politically active priests suffering particularly harsh persecution. Callado’s novel gained special significance in this socical setting and is still one of the most important novels in Brazilian contemporary literature to this day.

Sempreviva is one of Callado’s most significant works. The Brazilian Quinho intends to avenge the murder of his lover, the mulatto girl Lucinda, who was abducted by the military regime, and then tortured and killed on a fazenda.

In A expedição Montaigne (“The Montaigne Expedition”), a journalist wants to free the native population from the white man. As an admirer of French culture, he takes along a bust of Montaigne. But the plan comes to a disastrous end.

Quase memória (“Quasi Memoir”) is a book of wonderful storytelling that shows a different Brazil and a world long gone, where living life was deemed more important than gain. One evening, Carlos Heitor Cony receives a letter from his late father. Seeing his handwriting evokes past adventures with the man who managed to make life exciting even in the direst circumstances. An insightful and heart-warming story that expertly blends fiction with facts, combining personal reminiscence with the Rio de Janeiro of the 1930s to 50s.

Cony’s latest novel, A morte e a vida (“Life and Death”), deals with the controversial topic of euthanasia. Nurse Vilma is dedicated to her work. When Edmundo asks her to help his wife Maria Emília to die a painless death in the last stages of cerebral cancer, she is reluctant. Slowly, the two of them get emotionally involved…

Desire, betrayal, malice and acidity permeate these explosive pages, with lively texts that provoke, disturb and make you laugh – just like in The Paediatrician, whose protagonist is the epitome of this scathing aspect of the writer‘s work. I Deny Everything. Sudden Fictions (“Nego tudo. Ficções súbitas”) is both an aesthetic delight and a sophisticated exercise in literature by an experienced author, who plays with form in very short stories and challenges common sense, questioning any Manichaeism.
In a handmade, numbered edition restricted to friends, first published in 2005, I Deny Everything was, unbeknown to anyone, the genesis of what would become Andrea del Fuego‘s new oeuvre two decades later. A sui generis book, which on its twentieth anniversary gets this new version, revised and reworked in detail by del Fuego: half of the stories have been replaced, others rewritten, but the rebellious essence remains.

Although medicine was a natural choice for Cecília, following in the footsteps of her father, she does not match the image one expects of a paediatrician. A doctor who is not at all maternal, with little affection for children and zero patience for their mothers and fathers.
And yet she has a successful practice as a sought-after neonatologist. Gradually, however, she ends up losing ground to a humanist paediatrician, who works with doulas, midwives and accompanies home births. Even the obstetrician with whom she has always worked seems to prefer the humanist.

Cecília undertakes an obsessive dive into the universe of humanised childbirth and alternative medicine, despite being practices she deeply despises. In parallel, she has a relationship with a married man, whose son she treats professionally during his birth. And this child will awaken unexpected feelings and attitudes in her.
With caustic humour and deft, succinct prose, Andrea del Fuego presents in The Paediatrician (“A Pediatra”) an insightful look at human behaviour and key contemporary issues, such as ethics, empathy and the limits that can be easily crossed by those in a position of power.

In her new novel The Miniatures (“As miniaturas”), Andrea del Fuego plunges the reader into a highly original world made up of dreams and reality. In a mysterious building full of corridors, people are working, under strict regulations, as interpreters of dreams. One day, as he leads a boy through his dreams using plastic miniatures, an interpreter realizes the boy is the son of one of his other clients. Although not allowed to work with members of the same family, the interpreter doesn’t report it and gets more and more involved in the lives of mother and son. Once again the author captivates her readers with a profound and entertaining novel.

The Malaquias (“Os Malaquias”) is an intriguing, intelligent story of family ties and fate in a world where magic lives alongside reality: When their parents die after being struck by lightning, Nico, Antônio and Júlia are separated. While each one tries to make it on their own, they continue to look for each other. Nico stays behind on a coffee plantation, while Antônio and Júlia are sent to an orphanage. In time, Antônio joins Nico and his family and Júlia becomes a successful dressmaker. Then Nico decides to leave for new shores, where he is sure he will see his sister again. A captivating family saga enhanced by a fresh literary tone that skillfully combines scientific conciseness with magical elements.

The world is living through an epidemic caused by an unknown virus, the Bola. The virus has already killed many people, including the grandfather of Vitor, a super-smart thirteen-year-old boy, skinny, with pimples on his face, who lives alienated from the world in front of his computer. Because of Samara, with whom he is in love, the young man discovers a game on the internet, the Skull, and ends up joining the mysterious Crystal Skull Society (“Sociedade da Caveira de Cristal”). To advance in the game, Vitor has to leave the computer on, the internet connected, and to fall asleep, because the game continues in his dreams. Thus, all the players have the same dream and live the same adventure. But Vitor, Samara, and the smart Jorjao (who owns an internet cafe) realize that something is wrong in this story and that together they can save the world from Bola.

First published in 2000, Sinful Capão (“Capão Pecado”) marked an era and became one of the most talked about works of marginal literature.

In Sinful Capão, lives are worth very little, almost nothing. Everything is always hanging by a thread. As Ferréz writes, “the future is further ahead, much further ahead”. So far ahead that it’s often too late.
Rael is a teenager who wants to get away from the atrocious environment of violence in which he grew up. A dedicated son, he endeavours to get a good job. But his destiny is about to change when he falls in love with Paula, his friend’s girlfriend.

This book, which has already won over legions of readers in Brazil and around the world with its brutal and relentless story, is now in its sixth revised edition, with an afterword by Marcelino Freire. By narrating the dark underbelly of an utterly unequal society, where machismo and cruelty dictate the rules, this novel reveals its overwhelming force and its power to provoke new reflections.

Practical Handbook of Hatred (“Manual prático do ódio”) was called “a punch in the stomach” by the critics. It tells the story of Régis, Lúcio Fé and other favela dwellers, who can’t wait to pull off the big heist that will finally make them rich. They don’t care about harming those they live alongside, creating a world full of hatred and violence. In this drastic yet captivating novel, Ferréz shows the darkest and dirtiest sides of life in the favela.

Ferréz’ novel God Went Out For Lunch (“Deus foi almoçar”) is about the apparently calm life of the middle-aged public official Calixto. When he is left by his wife and his daughter, it could be a turning point for him. Although unable to adapt to his new situation, he cannot decide to take a new step either and stays trapped in a life that from the bottom of his heart he is longing to change. With this realistic and well-observed novel, Ferréz takes a close look at the Brazilian middle class for the first time.

The most important writer from the so-called marginal literature of Brazil, Ferréz, from São Paulo, makes his debut in the infantile-juvenile genre with Emerald Dawn (“Amanhecer Esmeralda”). In a beautifully illustrated edition, the author tells how the daily life of Emerald, a black girl and resident of a poor community, is being altered by gestures of love that improve her self-esteem. According to Ferréz, the character was inspired by a child who attended his lectures and impressed him with a haughtiness comparable to the great African nobles.

Based on real records and documents from guerrilla fighters, Guiomar de Grammont’s new novel Crosswords (“Palavras cruzadas”) is a story about the Brazilian resistance movement told through a family that is falling apart over the unsolved crimes of the past. Brazil, 1971: As a young man, Leonardo leaves his home to follow the Guerrilha do Araguaia, a resistance group in the Amazon region. He never returns. 25 years later, Leonardo’s younger sister Sofia goes looking for him, taking with her a mysterious diary of two partisans who describe their secret everyday life and their daily struggle for survival in the depths of the jungle. Only much later will Sofia learn that its authors are her brother and his lover Mariana who, pregnant, has to leave the secret camp on her own. Mariana’s traces disappear in São Paulo, Leonardo’s in the jungle itself. For Sofia, many questions will remain open, but one answer is waiting for her: her niece. As in a crossword, the voices of the different characters flow together, making a forceful claim for clarification and closure, on behalf of all the families whose sons and daughters have disappeared, leaving them to wonder about what might have happened and living lives that can’t escape the past. Writing from Sofia’s point of view, Guiomar de Grammont treats these difficult topics with great sensitivity, leaving the reader deeply moved by the tenderness of her voice.

Blood Harvest (“Safra de sangue”) is a rural novel whose main character is Agnes, the leader of a small community called Celeiro, a kind of healer and spiritual adviser to the farming families. She will do anything to bury her niece in one piece, since the child was killed by a soybean harvesting machine belonging to a large cooperative that exploits local workers. The girl, who had her hair caught in the machine’s combs and her scalp ripped off and then stolen, was left in the fields to die. Agnes will seek justice whatever the cost.

The breathtaking eco novel The Red Earth (“Água turva”), plays with the limits of truth and fiction. In an impressive narrative, Morgana Kretzmann portrays elements of recent Brazilian history and reveals the ambition of powerful men faced with one of our greatest treasures: the environment.
The story takes place on the border between Brazil and Argentina, in an area where the Turvo State Park is located, which has the largest longitudinal waterfall in the world, the Salto do Yucamã, a sacred place threatened by the illegal construction of a hydroelectric power station. Park ranger Chaya is responsible for preventing the hunt of wild animals in the park. Preta, her cousin, separated from the family as a child, is the leader of a much-feared group of hunters and smugglers in the Argentinian side of the border, the Pies Rubros. Olga, the parliamentary assistant of a greedy legislator, is forced to return to her hometown as a spokeswoman for the incoming environmental tragedy — until she realizes the chance to change the course of history is in her hands. From enemies to allies, the three women find themselves forced to overcome a troubled past in order to finally build a possible future for everyone. But they aren’t alone: Sarampião, the mythical figure of a park ranger and nature protector and not least Chaya’s grandfather, seems to accompany them and help them in battle.

Morgana Kretzmann’s debut novel To Dust (“Ao pó”), 2021 São Paulo Literature Prize winner, tells the story of Sofia, a young theatre actress who could have a brilliant career in Rio de Janeiro if she didn’t have to struggle with the shadows of her past. Even her boyfriend Carlos, a respected playwright, can’t help her; their relationship experiences ups and downs that eventually lead to a humiliating break-up. Sofia is also haunted by great feelings of guilt, because when she, barely of age, fragile and with no security, turned her back on her homeland to finally escape her uncle’s abuse, she left her younger sister Aline behind against her will – knowing that she would meet the same fate as herself. Sofia takes refuge more and more often in increasingly rampant alcohol binges, and when, after a concert, she allows all the men in the band to have sex with her, Carlos’s ego can no longer stand it. He changes the lock and sends her things in bin bags to a friend’s address. From then on, Sofia can’t shake off the thought of revenge, revenge on the men who destroyed her: Carlos, the band leader, and especially her uncle. To do this, she travels to São Paulo, to Belo Horizonte and back to her hometown of Tenente Portela in southern Brazil. There, her sister has just committed suicide, and in the end, it is the single mother, who had turned a blind eye to all the years of abuse, who avenges her daughters.

In Green Club and the Soil League: How it all began (“O Clube Verde e a Liga dos Solos: Como tudo começou”), four sixth-grade friends investigate a farm suspected of using illegal pesticides. Esperança, Joia, Clá, and Nim were merely attempting to complete a school project, but ended up involved in the rescue of an ancient being with special powers, a member of the Soil League. The League members are under threat, and the lives of everyone on the planet depend on them. They will join forces with the Green Club to try to stop the actions of powerful people who, driven by greed, are creating the most devastating pesticide, capable of destroying all types of soil in the world, thus leaving humanity without food.
With short, dynamic chapters narrated in the first person, renowned authors Morgana Kretzmann and Paulo Scott sensitively address themes such as first love, school life and friendship, as well as focusing on environmental crimes and reflecting on the relationship between humans and nature.
An adventure full of twists and turns suitable for readers aged 9 and up.

Better Not Tell (“Melhor não contar”) opens with an initiation scene: at the age of ten, the protagonist is relaxing at a swimming pool in the company of her mother and her stepfather. Not yet having reached puberty, she discards her bikini top and enjoys her innocence in the sun and wind. The quiet is interrupted when her stepfather, an acclaimed filmmaker, presents the sketch of the observation drawing he made earlier – there’s the girl, portrayed at that moment, with a detail that was impossible to miss: “Her nipples, pointing one at each end of the paper, catch the eye. There’s more ink on them, they’ve been drawn with force. They’re erect, I notice.”

This event would mark the end of the childhood (and innocence) of that girl, the daughter of a pioneering intellectual and journalist, a woman of unusual spirit and vitality. And in spite of this – as the narrator notes as an adult – even this powerful and apparently unbeatable mother had to deal with fluctuating male desires and the glaring inequalities between the genders. In life and in art.

Using the book’s title as a brilliant paradox, the narrator then decides to tell everything (or almost everything): from the rampant illness that will take her mother away from her when she is still young, to her partner’s reaction to an abortion when the protagonist is already mature and living abroad. And she does even more: she reflects on the difference between women and men when it comes to telling a story. Why are women so attached to diaries from childhood onwards? The answer, intuits Tatiana Salem Levy’s restless character, may have something to do with violence and abuse.

Vista Chinesa: It‘s 2014. Brazil and especially the city of Rio de Janeiro are euphoric. The Fifa World Cup is about to start, the 2016 Olympics are in sight. Construction is booming and real estate values are high. There is the feeling that Brazil has found a new path. A time of hope.

Júlia is a partner in an architecture firm in charge of some projects for the Rio Olympics. On the day of a meeting at City Hall, Júlia goes running. Since her teenage years she is obsessed with having a „perfect body“, thin and healthy thanks to diet and exercise. But along the way, someone holds a gun to her head and takes her to an isolated area. Júlia thinks that she would be killed as soon as the aggressor finished his deed. But she survives.

The physical description of the rape is treated delicately. The story focuses on Júlia and her attempts to communicate and rationalize the disgust she feels over having been raped. The rosary of pain, the overwhelming feelings of filthiness and guilt so common among victims of sexual violence, is described with great narrative skill. So are the successive trips to the police to identify suspects. And the sloppy and sometimes rude policeman, with little concern for the welfare of this citizen. Not everything is horror and darkness, however. The story is told to the protagonist‘s children, a girl and a boy, years after the terrible episode and in a Brazil already stripped of its party clothes. A „message in a bottle“ format, as the protagonist one day feels an urgent need to tell her children about the violation of the body which they came from.

Vista Chinesa is an impacting novel based on a true episode of sexual violence experienced by a friend of the author. The real-life rape during a run in the area known as Vista Chinesa, a lush Atlantic Forest in the middle of the metropolis. The identity of the friend and further details are addressed in a note at the end of the text. Vista Chinesa is the story of a woman and a city raped.

When Ana learns that she may be gravely ill, she retreats to a friend’s house in the countryside to face her demons, both past and future.

Having avoided her past for so long, Ana is finally forced to confront the tragedies that beset her family: the death of her beloved half-sister, her only ally when she didn’t know who to turn to when faced with an impossible choice, and what followed after. On her own in the countryside, Ana is set on deciphering a family curse which she believes to be at the root of it all, unravelling her ancestors’ unhappy stories. But real life soon catches up with her when she meets the mysterious Daniel, an artist who has chosen the wilderness to deal with his own problems. As they start sharing their pasts, a fragile future starts to emerge.

Superbly written, Paradise (“Paraíso”) is a gripping novel about the surprising power of overcoming adversity and shaping our own fate.

Largely autobiographical, The House in Smyrna (“A chave de casa”) is a gripping story spanning three generations and three continents that takes up contemporary issues in a rather unusual way. When her Turkish grandfather gives her a key to a house in Smyrna, the narrator sets out on a fascinating voyage into the past. While her Jewish grandparents had to flee from the Inquisition in Portugal to Turkey, in Brazil, her parents were persecuted as communists. Caught up in memories not her own, the young woman is haunted by her present, finding out who she truly is – and who she wants to be. A vibrant and original novel.

Have a look at an English extract on bookanista here!

Two Rivers (“Dois rios”) tells two parallel love stories whose protagonists share a dark secret. When Joana meets Marie-Ange on Copacabana beach, it is love at first sight. They embark on a passionate relationship in Corsica and Dois Rios, the place of Joana’s childhood. When Joana’s estranged twin brother Antonio sees Marie-Ange in Paris, he is immediately infatuated with her. Feeling finally able to make peace with his sister, he decides to face the demons of their past, remembering how very close they used to be. But then Marie-Ange abandons them both… Writing in beautifully atmospheric prose, Tatiana Salem Levy spins two tales that complement and contradict each other at the same time, irrevocably changing the characters in the process. An unforgettable read.

Pirapora, the Curupira (“Curupira Pirapora”), lives in Brazil’s rain forest and enjoys scaring hapless visitors with his red hair, green fur, yellow eyes and backward feet, laughing his head off whenever he succeeds. Janaína is a girl from the city who adores wearing tingly jewelry. Her mother is white, her father Indian. Janaína is sent to her grandparents to spend the summer in Amazonia but the mere thought of all the insects and plants and strange noises makes her shake with fear. Then Janaína and Pirapora, the Curupira, meet unexpectedly. After the first shock, they start living the most fantastic adventures together. Playfully giving us a glimpse of the diverse cultures that coexist in Brazil, this beautifully illustrated and superbly written book shows us how two beings who couldn’t be more different from one another can become friends. The Curupira is a mythical creature from Brazilian folklore who protects the forest and its animals.