The Book of Rio: A City in Short Fiction (Reading the City)

This diverse, literary patchwork of Rio de Janeiro contains 10 short stories set in varied quarters of the city drawing on its inhabitants' experiences of recent historical and cultural changes. From Copacabana's thriving LGBT scene in the 1960s where the military dictatorship simultaneously terrorizes and represses politically-minded citizens, to the exhausted labourers constructing the Rio-Niteroi bridge - 'the pride of Brazil' - at gunpoint in 1974, to contemporary life in the neighbourhood of Leblon, where a call girl trying to get to a party reluctantly accepts a very strange job for the evening. The ten stories in this anthology bring to life the complex and ever-changing face of Rio de Janeiro behind the images of slums, carnivals and the sex trade. Featuring stories by award-winning, leading authors, screenwriters, journalists and playwrights, including 2013 International Emmy Award-winner, João Ximenes Braga.

Katie Slade is the rights, sales, and events manager at Comma Press. Toni Marques is a Brazilian journalist and writer. He is a story editor with the Globo TV news show Fantástico. João Ximenes Braga was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1970 and is an author, journalist, and award-winning screenwriter. He began his career in professional journalism at the newspaper O Globo where he reported on police matters, politics, literature and fashion, and wrote a column of chronicles for 14 years. He was also a correspondent in New York between 1997 and 2000. In 2002, he quit journalism and focussed on writing fiction full-time. He has published four books including two novels, Porra (Damn) and Juízo (Judgement), the short story collection A Mulher que Transou com o Cavalo e Outras Histórias (The Woman who Slept with the Horse and Other Stories) and one collection of the chronicles published in O Globo, A Dominatrix Gorda (The Fat Dominatrix). In 2005 he started working in television where he collaborated on two telenovelas, Paraíso Tropical (Tropical Paradise) and Insensato Coração (Foolish Heart). In 2012, he released his first telenovela, Lado a Lado (Side by Side), co-written with Claudia Lage which received a 2013 International Emmy Award. He is currently working on a prime-time telenovela to be released in 2015, about different social classes in the small neighbourhood of Leme in Rio de Janeiro.