Brazil - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449911632 ISBN 13: 9780449911631

Publisher: Random House Trade, 1996

Synopsis

They meet by chance on Copacabana Beach: Tristao Raposo, a poor black teen from the Rio slums, surviving day to day on street smarts and the hustle, and Isabel Leme, an upper-class white girl, treated like a pampered slave by her absent though very powerful father. Convinced that fate brought them together, betrayed by families who threaten to tear them apart, Tristao and Isabel flee to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west -- unaware of the astonishing destiny that awaits them . . .

Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-sixties to the late eighties, BRAZIL surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.

"A tour de force . . . Spectacular." -- Time

"Updike's novel, as tender as it is erotic, becomes a magnificently wrought love story . . . . Beautifully written." -- Detroit Free Press

About this title

Review:

"Steamy . . . breathtaking . . . In Updike's novel, our vast South American neighbor emerges as a country both ancient and new."--The New Yorker

"There is a wonderful drive to the novel, true lyricism, real drama. . . . Updike has rare insight into the psychology of sexual behavior and the mysterious, almost otherworldly devotedness Tristão and Isabel share."--Chicago Tribune

"The book [is] thrilling, not only by its own rights, as an action-driven narrative designed to thrill, but also as an instance of a contemporary master, one whom we thought we had figured out long ago, daring to reinvent himself before our jaded eyes."--The New Criterion

From the Back Cover:

John Updike's sixteenth novel takes place in a stylized Brazil where almost anything is possible, if you are young and in love. Tristao Raposo, a nineteen-year-old black child of the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach; their flight into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them; his mother curses them, her father harries them with hirelings, and neither lover is absolutely faithful. Yet Tristao and Isabel hold to the faith that each is the other's fate for life, as they pass - in Shakespeare's phrase - "through nature to eternity". Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-Sixties to the late Eighties, Brazil surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0449911632
• ISBN 13: 9780449911631
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272