Ashes of the Amazon
Published on 19. October 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-7475-9672-1 (ISBN)
Description
Mundo is a rebel - the embittered offshoot of a rich family, whose artistic vocation clashes with his father's dynastic plans. Ashes of the Amazon charts his determined flight from the fraught centre of his family's wealth - the Vila Amazonia plantation - through Rio de Janeiro, and then to the effervescent worlds of 1970s Berlin and London. In Ashes of the Amazon, Hatoum takes to heart Flaubert's injunction to write 'the moral history of his generation', with extraordinary results. This is a beautiful, mature and involving novel from one of the most important South American writers of his time.
Reviews / Votes
One of South America's leading contemporary novelists' Maya Jaggi, Guardian 'Mysterious Powerful By the end of Ashes of the Amazon I was fully aware of its grandeur' Laura Thompson, Daily Telegraph 'It is at its richest towards the end where characters only lightly sketched are seen at last in colour [There is] an admirable clarity in the portrayal of the setting and a sophisticated and fascinating shifting of our sympathies' Daniel Hahn, Independent 'Hatoum's understated style loses none of its quiet shine in John Gledson's sensitive translation readers coming to the book's revelatory final pages will emerge steeped in melancholy from this sweltering fictional universe. Ashes of the Amazon marks the next assured step in the career of a consistently persuasive author' Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial TimesMore details
Person
Milton Hatoum was born in Manaus, Amazonas, and studied architecture in Sao Paulo and comparative literature in Paris. He is Professor of Literature at the Federal University of Amazonas and a visiting Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California. He lives in Sao Paulo. John Gledson is Professor Emeritus of Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool. He is author of books on Machado de Assis and the twentieth-century poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade. He has translated several works by Brazilian authors, including The Brothers by Milton Hatoum.