Book, Restinga: ten short stories and a novel[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. Miguel Angel fought the Uruguayan dictatorship alongside the Tupamaros. Like many young activists of his time, he disappeared without a trace. The repercussions of this episode will be felt for years to come, as part of the family migrates to other corners of Latin America taken over by military governments and caudillos. In this one of the most beautiful recent stories in the Portuguese language, Miguel Del Castillo combines memory and politics to investigate the effects of great collective tragedies on private lives. It is an affective testament that reinforces the power of literature in the continuous clash with history. Not surprisingly, “Violeta” earned the author a place among the twenty best young Brazilian writers, in the selection of Granta magazine. In this volume of short stories, the reader will see that “Violeta” is not an accident along the way: here it appears within a strong and new literary project, in stories that alternate between delicacy, loneliness and relationships of love and friendship. It is the daughter who takes care of her sick mother, whose dream is to visit the Marambaia restinga, in Rio, on a visit that will illuminate the family past and open paths for the future. Or the woman who takes a cruise on the Atlantic - “which celebrates the incredible fact that we are here together, on the sea” - and starts to review her past life in a new and unusual light. Or even the boy who visits his father in Cancun, a trip full of mysteries and misunderstandings, the adult world seen through the cracks of an unusual childhood. At the end of the book, the novel “Laguna” expands and deepens the author's themes, in a dizzying narrative about passion, travel, the ties that unite us and the fragility of our bonds.