The question of gambling in popular culture by focusing on the "animal game," a kind of popular gambling entertainment or lottery within Brazil in which locals bet on a list of twenty-five animals.

Jose de Alencar's prose-poem Iracema, first published in 1865, is a classic of Brazilian literature--perhaps the most widely-known piece of fiction within Brazil, and the most widely-read of Alencar;s many works. Set in the sixteenth century, it is an extremely romantic portrayal of a doomed live between a Portuguese soldier and an Indian maiden. Iracema reflects the gingerly way that mid-nineteenth century Brazil dealt with race mixture and multicultural experience. Precisely because of its nineteenth-century romanticism, Iracema strongly contributed to a Brazilian sense of...

There are no heroes in Igna cio de Loyola Branda o's world, only victims: not only of violence, but of deceit, desire, and fear. In The Good-Bye Angel, Branda o returns to his great subject: the tyranny of the community versus the individual, the city versus its inhabitants. Large enough to develop its own mythology, yet small enough to be provincial and petty, the city of Arealva (standing in for Brazil, and the world at large) is itself a character in Branda o's latest novel, toying with and finally consuming its citizens with the innocent cruelty of a cat with its prey--it's nothing...

Rubem Fonseca's Crimes of August offers the first serious literary treatment of the cataclysmic events of August 1954, arguably the most turbulent month in Brazilian history.

A rich novel, both culturally and historically, Crimes of August tells two stories simultaneously. The first is private, involving the well-delineated character of Alberto Mattos, a police officer. The other is public, focusing on events that begin with the attempted assassination of Carlos Lacerda, a demagogic journalist and political enemy of President Getulio Vargas, and culminate in Vargas's suicide on August...

The Lady of Solitude projects a fresh and daring new voice on to the Brazilian literary scene. These transgressive and highly charged erotic stories are all written from a woman's point of view and they offer an unexpected perspective on the world, sex and desire in a changing Brazilian and global context. That is not to say that all of Parisot's characters are strong, emancipated and resolute: they just live in a world where relationships of all kinds have changed. Avowedly a disciple of the famous detective writer Rubem Fonseca, Paula Parisot adds a new and sinister twist to crimes...