Lughnasa College Moon
7th and 16th in GDP. 5th and 4th in population. 5th and 15th in geographic size. What are Brazil and Indonesia? I know little about either one. Trying to plug that gap at least a little I just finished a remarkable book called, A Death in Brazil, by Peter Robb.
(farofa fried cassava (manioc) flour)
It’s a strange book structurally and in terms of genre, impressionistic in its use of anecdotes sprinkled through research on Brazilian colonization, slavery, key literary figures and recent political ethos (through 2003). It is a Conradian evoking of the steamy foreign with strange, slightly distant figures acting and reacting in ways both understandable and despicable, and repetitive.
Yet, it is also a travel book, apparently recounting the author’s journey’s in Brazil, particularly in the northeastern coastal city of Recife. These passages go into detail about native Brazilian foods like farofa and moqueca de camarão (left).
Robb’s through line is about the first democratically elected president of Brazil, Fernando Collor and his money man, PC Farias. He recounts Collor rise to power in the small, poor state of Alagoas and PC’s role as his money man. Lula, the union organizer and presidential hopeful for the Worker’s Union Party, is the contrast to Collor, a man of the people rather than a man of the monied elite.
The book weaves in the work of Machado de Assis, Gilberto Freyre, and Euclides da Cunha, using these literary figures as lenses for viewing Brazilian society. It’s a clever deployment of literature because it illuminates the socio-political landscape of Brazil while focusing on Brazilian literary classics.
When finished, I had at least an outline of Brazilian history from the time of Portuguese colonization through 2003, an introduction to the slave trade and its unusually cruel instance in Brazil (the largest total number of slaves ever in the Western hemisphere and Brazil did not end slavery until 1888.), the political dynamic between the huge rural regions and the populous cities like Rio and Sao Paulo and an update of Brazilian political processes in the first decade of the new millennium.
Well worth reading.
Anybody know a similar book about Indonesia?
