Nine Nights

(Paperback)

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Description

An extraordinary Brazilian novel, reminiscent of Naipaul, Faulkner or Conrad in its remarkable power and its exploration of human behaviour on the edges of civilisation. In August 1939, a brilliant, privileged twenty-seven-year-old American ethnologist commits suicide in Brazil, leaving behind seven letters suggesting different motives. To some he said he had contracted a terrible disease; to others he claimed he could not recover from his wife's affair with his brother (though he was neither married, nor had a brother). Intrigued by the mystery, our narrator gathers the fragmentary evidence and sets out to discover the truth, becoming obsessed, before long, with the idea that there was an eighth letter. Slipping between fact and fiction, reality and illusion, this striking and haunting novel by one of Brazil's most remarkable contemporary writers follwos one man's personal quest for certainty - a mission that slowly drives him mad; a Marlowe haunted by the fate of his own Kurtz.

Reviews

Deploys his fact/fiction hijinks to produce an ending that is still haunting me, months later -- John Franzen * Guardian *
A spellbinding book, Nine Nights is a masterly combination blending fiction, research, history, ethnology and journalism * Le Figaro *
A dark but exhilarating journey into the jungle of a man's mind - deftly written and highly original * Evening Herald *
Gripping...a thriller in the manner of Joseph Conrad * Tetu *
Nine Nights [is] a beautiful and disturbing meditation on love and death, on familyand identity. A rich and profound study of the nature of doubt * La Croix *

Author Bio

Bernardo Carvalho was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960. He has been correspondent for A Folha De Sao Paulo in Paris and New York. He is the author of a number of other novels - most recently Mongolia, winner of the Premio Jabuti, Brazil's most prestigious literary prize - of which Nine Nights is the first to be published in English. Bernardo Carvalho lives in Sao Paulo.