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The story of an encounter with one of the world’s greatest and strangest countries. Combining travel, history, culture and his own memories of twenty years of Brazilian life, Robb delves into the past and present of a baroque country, writing about Brazil’s centuries of slavery and the vibrant but disturbed society that slavery left behind. Even today, Brazil is a nation of almost unimaginable distance between its rich and its poor, a place of extraordinary levels of crime and violence, but also one of the most beautiful and seductive places on earth. Using the art, food, and the books of Brazil’s great writer, Machado de Assis, Robb takes us on a journey into a sensual and frightening world. Power, murder, greed, ambition, sexual drama and family jealousy mirror the TV soap operas watched by a hundred million Brazilians every night, stories whose only structure is desire and whose only resolution is death.

Left on the bookshelf in Haven