A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions

I'm a big fan of Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily. About that masterpiece, The Economist called it "simply the best book in English about Italy." The author's latest work, A Death in Brazil, promised and delivered much of the same - a heady, erudite mix of Mr. Robb's skillful interspersing of equal parts history, political machinations, and personal travelogue. For good measure, like Midnight in Sicily you also get a gastronomic tour de force. Robb appreciates the regional dishes and describes what brings them to the table as well as what they taste like going down, what he drank with it, who served him, who he was dining with, other characters in the restaurant that night...you get the idea. As noted in an excellent review in the UK's Telegraph, A Death in Brazil is, like Midnight in Sicily, "impossible to corral into a single genre" and "a dazzling testament to [Robb's] appetite for knowledge and understanding." Exactly. Mr. Robb's home base for this tale in a restaurant in Recife called Bangüê. His descriptive writing puts you square in the middle of the place, with proprietor Vavá chatting you up and Vavá's wife Dona Lia working the Burroughs accounting machine at the bar. For me, the best parts are the political stuff detailing the rapid rise and equally rapid fall of Brazil's president (1990 - 1992) Fernando Collor de Mello and his personal fixer and moneyman, PC Farias. Robb also details the rise of the Workers' Party and of its leader, Luis Inácio 'Lula' da Silva. We get all sorts of delightful asides from the author. 'Lula' means 'squid' in Portuguese...he is so-named because in his early days, the now-President's unruly mane of hair draped his head like a mass of tentacles. Who knew? Another good touch is the hand-drawn maps of Alex Snellgrove. There's one of Brazil as whole and another providing more detail on the northeast section of the country where Robb does the majority of his reporting. Every place Robb mentioned in the text is marked clearly on one or both maps.

I really enjoyed this book. I approached it with apprehension because of the mediocre reviews some other readers gave it, but Robb really drew me in from the first chapter (in which he recounts how he almost got murdered in Rio de Janeiro). While his tendency to jump from theme to theme (from current political actors to food to conquest to everyday life in Recife to historical wars like Palmares and Canudos and back), I found the jumping around invigorating--it was kind of like reading a novel whose chapters end in cliffhangers, but at the conclusion the reader feels truly enlightened. His narrations of the Brazilian colony and state's quests to stamp out the rebel communities of Palmares (a quilombo, or escaped slave colony) and Canudos (a religious community formed by economic refugees) are especially gripping, though Mario Vargas Llosa's "The War of the End of the World" still gives a better picture of Canudos (although Vargas Llosa's interpretation of it as a community of religious extremists may be flawed). Robb also paints in-depth portraits of important Brazilian writers, such as Euclides da Cunha and Machado de Assis. The best parts for me were the lucid and entertaining stories of the rise of Lula da Silva and the rise and fall of Fernando Collor de Mello. (On a side note, if I had read this book prior to my trip to Brazil last year, I might have appreciated the otherwise dull but pleasant city of Maceio much more than I did.) I agree with other critics that Robb dismisses Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency too quickly and unfairly, but that fact hardly detracts from the book's strengths.

Last October, I ordered Peter Robb's "A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions," paying for hardcover on the strength of its reviews. It was worth the price. And well worth the weight. I hauled it around in my rucksack for during a four-week trip in the state of Bahia. Being a story hog, I generally read fiction written by local authors when I travel. But this nonfiction kept me fascinated throughout. As a visitor with little information about Brazil, I found the book gave me a tremendous headstart on the culture, the political history, the food, the population and TV. With many quirky details. Robb's mix of political history, personal travelogue, and ideology sustained me throughout. After I gobbled up the book, my husband read it. A fellow traveler borrowed it and read it in two days. Then a Brazilian friend insisted I leave it for her and now I'm ordering the book in paperback to take with me this winter when I return to Bahia.

Peter Robb has surpassed 'M' in this book. From a slow start (and patience is a virtue here) the insight of Brazil through Robb's eyes is nothing short of stunning. I bought the book because I loved 'M', Robb's swashbuckling analysis of Caravagio's passionate work and life. Be warned though, I gave a copy to a friend who 'couldn't get into it'. Robb has a style that requires the reader to go for the ride. I found it superbly rewarding. My only complaint is it's too long between books. This book ? Thank you Mr Robb. Brilliant. I bought my copy in a bookstore. This review is a result of sending a copy to a friend. That's my view. *****

"A Death in Brazil" is more than a mere personal memoir, travelogue, or political history. Rather, it combines all three, creating a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, a vivid, impressionistic tableau of Brazilian life and culture in which Robb interlaces past and present in a compelling, sometimes seamless manner. If you've spent much time in Brazil, Robb's brushstrokes of local color will bring back many memories. In my case, "A Death in Brazil" evoked a scary taxi ride in Maceio in Brazil's northeast in 1989; the mold encrusting the walls of a cheap hotel in Salvador in 1984, flavoring the room with a smell that I can still detect almost as soon as I set foot in the country; the protests for eleicoes direitas ja (direct elections now) in 1984, toward the end of military rule. Even the cover photo, of old pastel houses and people lingering aimlessly in their doorways to escape the stifling indoor heat, brings back memories of Rio de Janeiro's Gloria neighborhood, where in 1984 my hotel charged U.S. $3.20 a day for a room with intermittent air conditioning (depending on the mood of the reception desk) and private bath (thankfully with a gas-powered hot shower, rather than the uncertain chuveiro eletrico with wires dangling ominously behind the shower head, which always forced a choice between the promise of hot water and the possibility of sudden electrocution). The last time I was in Rio, in 2000, the hotel was more like $40 a day, and it had installed bulletproof glass to protect the reception desk from street crime. Armed violence is now a serious problem in urban Brazil; the urbane news presenter Boris Casoy devotes much of the Record Network television news to it. I went to Brazil twice in 2000, but a daily dose of the "Jornal da Record" newscast on satellite TV is scaring me from returning. For those who know little about the country, much of what Robb describes may seem mysterious, as though he were venturing into the Africa of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Speaking of which, Robb's encyclopedic knowledge encompasses a mention of Conrad's voyage to the Congo River on the "Ville de Maceio" in 1890, and allows him to bring in figures ranging from Roger Casement to Fernando Ramos da Silva, the star of the critically acclaimed 1981 movie "Pixote, a lei do mais fraco." Not only is Robb extremely knowledgeable, but his writing is first-rate (why does the British Commonwealth continue to produce so much fine and subtle writing?). He fills his narrative with imagery like this: "It was dark now, so damp the air was palpable, and silent outside. The smell of rank plaster filled the little room. It was peeling off the blue-washed walls in foamy patches. . . . In the world outside a fine and soundless rain was falling and a scarf of tiny droplets floated under the bulb of a yellow streetlight." (Pp. 305-306.) Robb's political perspective is to the left of mine and probably that of most American readers. As a result, I occasional