Brazil - Hardcover

Uys, Errol Lincoln

3.82

232 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671460285 ISBN 13: 9780671460280

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1986

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Chronicles the history of Brazil, as seen through five generations in the lives of two families--the Cavalcantis, settlers who establish the archetypical Brazilian plantation, and the da Silvas, pathfinders and prospectors in search of El Dorado

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From the Author:

Why choose Brazil as your subject? people ask me. I immigrated to America from South Africa in 1977. One of my first assignments was with James A. Michener, the renowned historical novelist, working for two years as assistant on his South African book, The Covenant. We spoke about countries with an epic history that would lend itself to a novel on a grand scale. One of the places I suggested was Brazil.

It was critical to have first-hand experience of the country. I began my research in Portugal, before traveling to Brazil, where I covered 15,000 miles, almost exclusively by bus to get a feel for that vast country. My journey took me into the sert�o, the arid backlands of the Northeast and to the Casas Grandes of coastal Pernambuco. I voyaged the Amazon from Belm to Manaus and rode by bus down to southernmost Rondonia. I followed the route of the bandeirantes, the Brazilian pathfinders, west of So Paulo and roamed the highlands of Minas Gerais.

The writing of Brazil took five years. Like my fictional hero, Amador Flores da Silva, I knew periods of utter loneliness and fear; times when I felt the caatinga closing in on me but always, I broke through the barrier. I never lost the will to understand the Brazilian thing.

I could ask no greater reward for my work than its review by Wilson Martins, one of Brazils most distinguished critics: Uys has accomplished what no Brazilian author from Jos de Alencar to Jorge Amado was able to do. He is the first to write our national epic in all its decisive episodes, from the indigenous civilization and the El Dorado myth, everything converging like the segments of a rose window to that reborn and metamorphosed myth that is Brasilia. He is the first outsider to see us with total honesty and sympathy and full empathy with the decisive moments in our history and their spiritual meaning. Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay are unsurpassed in our literature and evoke the great passages of War and Peace.

About the Author:

Errol Lincoln Uys is a renowned writer and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest in South Africa, and collaborated with James A. Michener on his South African novel, "The Covenant." He is the author of the acclaimed oral history, "Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression." He lives in Boston.

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