Brazil: A Novel - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449911632 ISBN 13: 9780449911631

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1996

Synopsis

In the dream-Brazil of John Updike’s imagining, almost anything is possible if you are young and in love. When Tristão Raposo, a black nineteen-year-old from the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach, their flight from family and into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil’s phantasmagoric western frontier. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them, yet this latter-day Tristan and Iseult cling to the faith that each is the other’s fate for life. Spanning twenty-two years, from the sixties through the eighties, Brazil surprises with its celebration of passion, loyalty, romance, and New World innocence.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

chance on Copacabana Beach: Tristao Raposo, a poor black teen from the Rio slums, surviving day to day on street smarts and the hustle, and Isabel Leme, an upper-class white girl, treated like a pampered slave by her absent though very powerful father. Convinced that fate brought them together, betrayed by families who threaten to tear them apart, Tristao and Isabel flee to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west -- unaware of the astonishing destiny that awaits them . . .

Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-sixties to the late eighties, BRAZIL surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.

"A tour de force . . . Spectacular." -- Time

"Updike's novel, as tender as it is erotic, becomes a magnificently wrought love story . . . . Beautifully written." -- Detroit Free Press
From the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

John Updike's sixteenth novel takes place in a stylized Brazil where almost anything is possible, if you are young and in love. Tristao Raposo, a nineteen-year-old black child of the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach; their flight into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them; his mother curses them, her father harries them with hirelings, and neither lover is absolutely faithful. Yet Tristao and Isabel hold to the faith that each is the other's fate for life, as they pass - in Shakespeare's phrase - "through nature to eternity". Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-Sixties to the late Eighties, Brazil surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0449911632
• ISBN 13: 9780449911631
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272