Sao Paulo Noir

(Paperback)

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"Bellotto has no trouble discovering dark doings...So 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

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 So Paulo's most complete translation."
--O Globo

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn 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, Maral Aquino, J Soares, Mario Prata, Ferrz, Vanessa Barbara, Ilana Casoy, and Drauzio Varella.

From the introduction by Tony Bellotto:

Encyclopedias will say that So Paulo is the main financial, corporate, and commercial center of South America. The census will show that So Paulo is the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, the Portuguese-speaking world, and the entire Southern Hemisphere...Scholars will inform us that So 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 So Paulo has a high crime rate. Sociologists will confirm that the city has an area known as Cracolndia (Crackland) and that among the violent and neglected communities spread along its periphery, one bears the ironic name Paraispolis (Paradise City). Politicians will roar that So 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.

Reviews

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

Author Bio

Tony Bellotto was born in So Paulo in 1960 and has lived in Rio de Janeiro for over twenty years. Guitarist and songwriter for the Tits (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 lngua, a television program focused on literature and music.