São Paulo Noir (Akashic Noir) - Softcover

Bellotto, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617755311 ISBN 13: 9781617755316

Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd., 2018

Synopsis

"Bellotto has no trouble discovering dark doings...São Paulo's size and diversity give this volume's 14 storytellers room to roam...In the year of #MeToo, Bellotto's Akashic entry has a timely feel, giving noir a host of feminine faces."
--Kirkus Reviews

"São Paulo Noir might be the strongest entry yet in the long-running and globe-spanning Akashic Noir series. Editor Tony Bellotto clearly has the Midas touch when it comes to selecting stories. São Paulo Noir excelled."
--San Francisco Book Review

Praise for editor Tony Bellotto:

"Undoubtedly, if Marlowe and Harry Bosch are Los Angeles, Matt Scudder is New York and Maigret, Paris, the detective Remo Bellini is São Paulo's most complete translation."
--O Globo

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. On the heels of Rio Noir, beloved Brazilian rock star and best-selling novelist Tony Bellotto ushers another world-class city into the Akashic Noir Series.

Brand-new stories by: Tony Bellotto, Olivia Maia, Marcelino Freire, Beatriz Bracher & Maria S. Carvalhosa, Fernando Bonassi, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Marçal Aquino, Jô Soares, Mario Prata, Ferréz, Vanessa Barbara, Ilana Casoy, and Drauzio Varella.

From the introduction by Tony Bellotto:

Encyclopedias will say that São Paulo is the main financial, corporate, and commercial center of South America. The census will show that São Paulo is the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, the Portuguese-speaking world, and the entire Southern Hemisphere...Scholars will inform us that São Paulo is the most multicultural city in Brazil, having received, since 1870, millions of immigrants from every part of the planet, and that it is the city with the largest populations of people of Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, and Arab origin outside their respective countries...Experts will assure us that São Paulo has a high crime rate. Sociologists will confirm that the city has an area known as Cracolândia (Crackland) and that among the violent and neglected communities spread along its periphery, one bears the ironic name Paraisópolis (Paradise City). Politicians will roar that São Paulo is the engine that drives Brazil...

More than historians and sociologists, writers have always been able to transform cities into great characters. This is the way we decipher devouring sphinxes.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Bellotto was born in São Paulo in 1960 and has lived in Rio de Janeiro for over twenty years. Guitarist and songwriter for the Titãs (Titans), one of the most important rock bands in Brazilian musical history, Tony's literary debut was the novel Bellini e a esfinge in 1955. Since 1999, he has hosted Afinando a língua, a television program focused on literature and music.

Review

Critical acclaim for Rio Noir, edited by Tony Bellotto:

"In the latest entry to this globetrotting series, a man goes for a tarot reading and winds up poisoned by the daughter he never knew he had. And that's just one story in a collection that takes us down the mysterious alleys and mazy favelas of Rio, just in time for the Olympic Games."
--O, the Oprah Magazine

"The latest installment of Akashic's geographically wide-ranging mystery series lands in Rio de Janeiro, a city whose famous imagery--the massive statue of Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf mountain, the beautiful beaches--constitutes the public face of the city, but behind lurks a 'world of shadows, blood, intrigue, violence, hideouts, and mystery'...A good introduction to writers of the region and to the dark side of a very sunny place."
--Booklist

"As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2016 summer Olympics amid fears of the Zika virus, this anthology of 14 dark and violent short stories set in the Brazilian city might give prospective visitors more reasons to be concerned...A solid addition to Akashic's acclaimed noir series."
--Publishers Weekly

"Bellotto has assembled here a winning cast of writers whose own procurers, colonels, cops, traffickers, socialites, slum-dwellers, embezzlers, tourists, detectives, journalists, politicians, assassins, outlaws, and coup-plotters jump off every page and into your bed. This anthology is delicious and deliciously discomforting."
--Words Without Borders, included in The Watchlist

"These clever, well written stories are for anyone who wants to get a 'behind the scenes' look at Rio, where drugs, violence, sex and murder are major themes. All of these stories show Rio as a city that is teeming with life, even if some of it is dark and shadowy."
--Susanne's Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1617755311
• ISBN 13: 9781617755316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280