Caio Fernando Abreu is one of those authors who is picked up by every generation

In these surreal and gripping stories about desire, tyranny, fear, and love, one of Brazils greatest queer writers appears in English for the first time

In 18 daring, scheming stories filled with tension and intimacy, Caio Fernando Abreu navigates a Brazil transformed by the AIDS epidemic and stifling military dictatorship of the 80s.

Tenderly suspended between fear and longing, Abreus characters grasp for connection:

• A man speckled with Carnival glitter crosses a crowded dance floor and seeks the warmth and beauty of another body.

• A budding office friendship between two young men turns into a surprising love, a strange and secret harmony. One man desires another but fears a clumsy word or gesture might tear their plot to pieces.

Abreu writes the stories of people whose intimate lives are on the verge of imploding at all times. Even simple gesturesa salvaged cigarette, a knock on the door from the hazy downpour of a dream, a tight-lipped smileare precarious offerings. Junkies, failed revolutionaries, poets, and conflicted artists face threats at every turn. But, inwardly ferocious and secretly resilient, they heal.

In these stories there is luminous memory and decay, and beauty on the horizon.

Translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato, currently an Iowa Arts Fellow and MFA candidate in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa.

Format: Paperback
Published: USA, 2022
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Pages: 181
Language: English
ISBN 13: 9781953861207
ISBN 10: 1953861207