Nine Nights - Softcover

Carvalho, Bernardo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099470330 ISBN 13: 9780099470335

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2008

Synopsis

This powerful, award-winning Brazilian novel is reminiscent of Naipaul, Faulkner and Conrad in its exploration of human behaviour on the edges of civilization.

In August 1939, a twenty-seven-year old American ethnologist, brilliant and from a solid background, mysteriously commits suicide in Brazil while studying among the tribes of the Amazonian basin. He leaves behind him seven letters, alleging different motives for his suicide: to some, he said he had contracted a terrible disease; to others, he said that he could not recover from his wife’s betrayal with his own brother (but he wasn’t married, and he didn’t have a brother).
In the present, the narrator becomes obsessed with the search for an eighth letter he is convinced must have existed.

As the reader observes, his search slowly drives him mad — a Marlowe haunted by the fate of his own Kurtz. This is truly a remarkable novel.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

About the Author:

Bernard Carvalho was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960. He has been correspondent for La Folha de Sao Paolo in Paris and New York. He is the author of Aberration and the novels Les Ivrognes et Les Somnambules, Les Initiales and Mongolia.
From the Hardcover edition.

Review:

"Deploys his fact/fiction hijinks to produce an ending that is still haunting me, months later" -- John Franzen * Guardian * "A spellbinding book, Nine Nights is a masterly combination blending fiction, research, history, ethnology and journalism" * Le Figaro * "A dark but exhilarating journey into the jungle of a man's mind - deftly written and highly original" * Evening Herald * "Gripping...a thriller in the manner of Joseph Conrad" * Tetu * "Nine Nights [is] a beautiful and disturbing meditation on love and death, on familyand identity. A rich and profound study of the nature of doubt" * La Croix *

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0099470330
• ISBN 13: 9780099470335
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224