Book, Tyranny of Love, A[LS]

Alone in the car, economist Otavio Espinhosa makes a radical decision: to give up sex. What seems like a joke turns out to be a profound personal crisis: a failed marriage, problems with his political activist son, the humiliating end of his academic career and the sui generis experience of having tried to get rich as a self-help guru. Otavio's career also seems to be in danger: everything indicates that he will be fired from the investment company where he works. The reader gradually unravels the investigation of a scheme in which Otavio may or may not be involved, painting a panorama of a country in economic, cultural and moral ruin. Instead of literature or philosophy that guided Tezza's previous works, it is mathematics – this “unaffected art”, which promises a logical way of thinking about the world – that drives the digressions of The Tyranny of Love. Otávio, however, will soon realize that neither rationality serves to tame life, nor is he himself as rational as he would like to believe.