Book, Waiting Night, A (The Darkest Place 1)[LS]

First volume in the series The Darkest Place, Milton Hatoum's new novel portrays the sentimental, political and cultural formation of a group of young people in Brasília in the 1960s and 1970s. Nine years after the publication of Orphans of Eldorado, Milton Hatoum returns to form of the long narrative in a three-volume series in which the family drama is intertwined with the history of the military dictatorship to give birth to a powerful formative romance. In the 1960s, Martim, a young man from São Paulo, moves to Brasília with his father after his traumatic separation from his mother. In the newly opened city, he becomes friends with a varied group of teenagers, including children of high and middle-level officials in the state bureaucracy, as well as residents of satellite cities, a space relegated to the true pioneers of the federal capital, disadvantaged migrants. Martim's cultural and love discoveries are contrasted with the pain of separation from his mother, from whom he spends long periods without news. In the absent maternal figure, the dark face of her youth is concentrated, permeated by the violence of the leaden years. In what is undoubtedly one of the best literary portraits of Brasília, Hatoum moves with his own skill between the personal and social dimensions of the drama and turns a family rupture into the reverse side of a country divided by a coup.