Max and the Cats

Unlike two of the reviews prior to this one, I was very impressed by the flow of this story. We go from a fearful child, fearful of his father, fear of cats, of life of danger. When he finally finds some pleasure in his life, it is taken away from him when he has to flee because of the Nazis. He then is involved in a boat sinking where he dreams (encounters) a cat who he first fears but then overcomes. Later in his life, he once again finds happiness, but it is tainted by a friend of his who has problems with black/white relationships (very normal in Brazil). He loses his mother in the war, and he visits his father in a German insane asylum. He has come to grips with his father and even meets an old lover. When he gets back to Brazil, he finds that the man he ran away from in Germany has come to live on the hill above his house. They have several run ins and Max come to the point where they face-off and Max kills him. Coming home after five years in jail, he spends the rest of his life raising prize 'brazilian angora' cats. It's a great little story about people conquering their fears, and trying to make things right in the world. Zeb Kantrowitz

I read this book to write an essay for Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi. I read life of pi fist. Max and the Cats was inspiration for Life of Pi. actually life of pi was the worst book i ever read. beacuse of this i liked Max and the cats. it was fresh, serious, and not wierd. One regrettable thing is that the story goes too fast...

"Max and the Cats" is a surreal comic novel by Moacyr Scliar, a great writer from Brazil. "Max" has been translated from Portuguese into English by Eloah F. Giacomelli (who also translated Scliar's monumental "Collected Stories"). "Max" tells the story of Max Schmidt, who is born in Germany in 1912, the son of a furrier. The novel tells of Max's coming of age and his emigration to Brazil.Max's life story is structured around his encounters with three big felines: a stuffed tiger in his father's shop, a jaguar, and an onca (a Brazilian wildcat). I don't want to reveal too much about the novel's quirky plot. I will just say that Max gets into many remarkable situations: comic, frightening, erotic, and/or absurd. Much of the story takes place under the specter of World War II and the Nazis, and other elements of the novel tap into the myth of the Americas as a new world of opportunity. Scliar also refers more than once to the work of Jose de Alencar, the 19th century Brazilian writer who created a romantic, idealized portrait of the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans. Scliar seems to be ironically commenting on the work of this literary predecessor."Max and the Cats" is a weird, wonderful triumph for Moacyr Scliar. Combining elements of mystery, realism, and the fantastic, this novel is an excellent example of Scliar's uniquely delightful voice.