His Own Man - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1922247383 ISBN 13: 9781922247384

Publisher: Scribe Publications

Synopsis

In this award-winning novel, acclaimed Brazilian writer Edgard Telles Ribeiro illuminates a dark corner of his countrys history. Marcilio Andrade Xavier is a charismatic young diplomat whose intelligence is matched only by his ambition. During the military dictatorship of 19641985, Maxs artful manoeuvring political and personal assures him a meteoric career as democracies topple throughout South America. Yet Max remains an enigma to his colleagues, his friends, and even his wife, who know few details of his involvement with oppressive regimes, let alone the CIA and MI6. Amid embassy machinations, glittering parties, dire acts, and revealing intimate encounters, one of Maxs younger colleagues starts piecing together who Max really is, and at what cost he has purchased his dazzling career. A political thriller of the highest order, His Own Man is a chilling anatomy of power, ambition, and betrayal.

About this title

About the Author

Brazilian author and diplomat Edgard Telles Ribeiro (b. 1944) spent a peripatetic childhood in Marseille and various other European cities. After returning to Brazil, he worked as a journalist, filmmaker, and professor of film studies before entering the foreign service. His debut novel O Craido Mudo (The Night Table), was published in English to critical acclaim as I Would Have Loved Him If I Had Not Killed Him, and was subsequently translated into Dutch, German, and Spanish. Later novels and short story collections have garnered some of the most important literary prizes in Brazil, including the Jabuti Prize (twice), the Brazilian Academy of Letters Prize; and for his latest novel, HIS OWN MAN, the Brazilian PEN Prize (2011). He currently divides his time between New York and Rio de Janeiro.

Kim M. Hastings was raised overseas and lived for several years in São Paulo. She studied Brazilian language and literature at Brown University and has a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese from Yale. For the past fifteen years, she has been a freelance editor and translator, working with academic presses and commercial publishers. Her translations include fiction by Rubem Fonseca, Rachel Jardim, and Adriana Lisboa. The author lives in New York and Rio de Janeiro.

Review

"This tale of international intrigue (Graham Greene might provide the best comparison) shows how malleable concepts of left and right, and right and wrong, can be during extended periods of political unrest and military repression. [Ribeiro's] nuanced and psychologically incisive rendering of survival strategies and personal costs rings true." —Kirkus (starred review)

"[His Own Man] offers a fascinating look at South American politics and revolution while simultaneously anatomizing a man without a soul." —Publishers Weekly

"A historically grounded and fascinating follow-up to Ribeiro’s first novel...this is yet another successful coup for this journalist and diplomat turned novelist." —Booklist

"Those seeking to understand Brazil’s past and present should look...to Telles Ribeiro." —The Monthly

"Ribeiro’s political commentary is of global import, a caution against too readily forgetting and too quickly adapting." —Words Without Borders

“His Own Man is an elegant, absorbingly knowing, chilling, dryly humorous and often moving portrait of political cynicism and ambition and its human toll—the banality of evil with a Brazilian diplomat's face. Illuminating one of our hemisphere's darkest periods, that of South America's military dictatorships, in a surprisingly intimate way, its tragedy feels universal.” —Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder and Interior Circuit.

"Max savors like no one else the sinister mechanisms of power and becomes a master at manipulating them to his own advantage. In the process, Telles Ribeiro's protagonist also joins the roster of the most unforgettable characters in modern fiction." —Laura Restrepo, author of Delirium 

“Recalling some of the finest works of recent political fiction to come from Latin America, such as Bolaño’s By Night in Chile, Telles Ribeiro’s His Own Man illuminates the sinister foundations upon which Brazil’s modern ‘economic miracle’ was actually built following the military coup d’état of fifty years ago. Yet this novel is not simply the haunting evocation of a bygone era in one nation’s history: it’s a reminder of the fragility of our own time, just about everywhere in the world—and we would do well to take note.” —Jaime Manrique, International Latino Book Award–winning author of Our Lives Are the Rivers and Cervantes Street

"A penetrating exploration of the [political] stage wings, where government, the military, and business leaders play their hands—with the press and the opposition silenced—and not merely in Brazil." —O Globo (Brazil)

"Assures the author's definitive place among the major novelists of the Portuguese language." —O Estado de São Paulo (Brazil)

"Perhaps the most masterfully conceived portrait of a diplomat in our literature since...Machado de Assis." —O Valor Econômico (Brazil)

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribe Publications
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1922247383
• ISBN 13: 9781922247384
• Binding: Paperback