Brazil (Penguin Modern Classics)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Penguin English Library features the best novels in the English language. Get lost in the amazing stories, browse the Penguin English Library. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Tristao Raposo, a nineteen-year old black child of the Rio slums, spies Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, across the hot sands of Copacabana Neach, and presents her with a ring. Their flight into marriage takes them from urban banality to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west....
About the Author
John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. John Updike's first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, was published in 1959. It was followed by Rabbit, Run, Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990). Other novels by John Updike include Marry Me, The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film, Memories of the Ford Administration, Brazil, In the Beauty of the Lilies and Toward the End of Time.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Brazil is the epic love story of Tristao and Isabel, a young black criminal from the Rio favellas and the rich white daughther of a powerful politician. Meeting on the dazzling sand and surf of Copacabana Beach, there's is a tragic romance that crosses the racial and economic boundaries of one of the world's most inequal countries. They embark on a voyage into Brazil's Heart of Darkness, from the rapid urbanisation of Rio and Sao Paolo to the goldmining frontier towns and pre-colonial civilisations of the interior. Their journey is like a Diego Rivera mural of Brazilian history, culture and sexuality, taking in Shamans and bandits, corrupt politicians and witchcraft, magic and betrayal. Part Homerian Odyssey, it is not an attempt at real-life life drama but more of a representational tableaux. Part Shakespearean tragedy, it has histrionic dialogue and charcaters undergong extraordinary metaphysical transformations. An outsider's dream of the country, for sure, but a vivid and wild ride all the way.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was new territory for me - I had only read the Rabbit novels before, and some short stories. This is very different - an epic story of tavel and personal development across Brazil. There are various symbolic elements which underscore various stages of the transformation of the two key characters, and there is much to enjoy. But ultimately it fails to convince. Whereas one has no doubt that Updike knew and understood the middle America of Rabbit, one is left with the uneasy feeling that in Brazil, he has only a tourist's understanding, and that the setting is really a peg on which to hang a magical realist parable which is clever rather than moving.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a parody, as some reviewers did spot at the time. Its aim is to make educated idiots reveal themselves - i.e., if you can't see the joke, the joke is on you. A completely empty story, grotesquely over-researched and presented in unnecessarily long and over-wrought sentences, drowned in cliches and encyclopedic information largely copied straight off the sheet, garnished with sex scenes employing vegetable symbolicism galore, while the characters have no personality or development whatsoever and there is no actual plot or anything even remotely psychologically interesting going on at all. The male protagonist even wears the same swimming trunks and uses the same razor blades at the end of the story as he did at the start, twenty or thirty years previously, It's pulp fiction camouflaged dressed up as real literature, like so many best-selling novels have been over the last 30 years, which clearly cheesed off Updike and made him produce this deliberate trash in the extreme. Once you get what's going on (clue: a story built on the melodramatic Weltschmerz libretto behind Wagner's "Tristan and Isolte", but transferred to modern day Brazil!), it's actually quite funny in a few places, but all in all it's a very long drawn stunt and a waste of paper and time. I suppose at least the author can claim it did serve its purpose as a reminder to us all that the old Andersen story of the Emperor and his new clothes is still as relevant as ever, but for me the conclusion would be: read Andersen, don't read this.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Do not buy this book
This book so irritated me I felt moved to write a review. The plot is weak on every level, it is cliched and the dialogue is jarringly awful. Read more
Published on 14 Sep 2009 by S. Benetti
Engaging, witty, and fun.
I noticed that this book received quite a number of less than wonderful reviews. This was the first of Updike's books I read so I came to it with no opinion or expectation. Read more
Published on 9 Aug 2009 by Ron Dixon SU
Brazil is a synergistic fusion of Updikean realism and latin
Brazil opens within the panoramic expanse of the xanthic, xeric, Copacobana, the scene of the first meeting between Tristao Raposo and the Opheliaesque Isabel Leme. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2001
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
