Exemplary Humans

At nearly 100 years old, Natália has lived a full life. A life defined by people: Vicente, her husband and fellow teacher; her best friend Sarah, the cookie seller; Jorge who offered tarot readings for humans and birds alike; and her friends who gathered each Sunday to eat bean stew and plot ways to resist Brazil's dictatorship any way they could. But slowly, one after another, the people that made up this old woman's life have disappeared, leaving her alone. Well, not entirely alone--she's pretty sure a spy is tracing her every move, and her loved ones haven't left her, not really. Now, with an unnamed external threat taking over the world, Natália watches the days pass from inside her Rio de Janeiro apartment, awaiting the daily call from her adult daughter living somewhere faraway "on the upper ocean."

In Juliana Leite's English-language debut, acutely translated by Zoë Perry, nothing is ever what it seems: neighbors are informants; ginger cookies exact revenge; and in a friend's dark basement, Vicente has visions of an early human ancestor being devoured by a lion. Walking the tenuous line between fact and fable, humor and horror, Exemplary Humans is an ambitious novel about memory and the human condition--past, present, and future.