City of God: A Novel [Paperback]

Paulo Lins (Author), Alison Entrekin (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2006

The searing novel on which the internationally acclaimed hit film was based,City of Godis a gritty, gorgeous tour de force from one of Brazil’s most notorious slums. Cidade de Deus: a place where the streets are awash with narcotics, where violence can erupt at any moment over drugs, money, and love—but also a place where the samba beat rocks till dawn, where the women are the most beautiful on earth, and where one young man wants to escape his background and become a photographer. WhenCity of Goderupted on screens worldwide, it became one of the most critically and commercially successful foreign films of recent years. But few were aware of the story behind the film. Written by Paulo Lins, who grew up in the favela (shantytown) Cidade de Deus in Rio e Janeiro and who spent years researching its gang history,City of Godbegan life as a coruscating, harrowing novelistic account of twenty years in the illicit pursuits of the youth gangs born from the favela. Now available in English for the first time,City of Godis a raw, powerful portrait of the countless millions of poor people all over the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lins's 1997 fiction debut—the source of the 2002 film published in English for the first time—chronicles two generations over three decades in the infamous Rio de Janeiro City of God, "a neo-slum of concrete, brimming dealer-doorways, sinister-silences and cries of despair." From the slum's creation in the early 1960s for flood victims, through the rise of disco and cocaine in the 1970s, to the horrific gang wars of the 1980s, Lins traces the rise and fall of myriad, often teenaged gangsters for whom guns, girls and drugs are the tools of power. While the film traces the divergent paths of two childhood friends, the novel rushes from vignette to vignette, with an ever-changing cast of characters with names like "Good Life," "Beelzebub" and "Hellraiser." Years, and pages, pass in a haze of smoking, drinking, snorting lines of cocaine, dancing sambas, swearing and planning the next big score. Guns dispense justice; the price for disrespect, whether to a spouse, a friend or the favela, is torture or death. Lins, who grew up in the City, lets the horror speak for itself. He serves up a Scarface-like urban epic, bursting with encyclopedic, graphic descriptions of violence, punctuated with lyricism and longing. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

First published in Brazil (as Cidade de Deus) in 1997 and adapted for the screen (as City of God) in 2002, this translation makes the book finally available to English-reading audiences. City of God is a housing project in Rio de Janeiro, initially intended for displaced flood victims. In a kind of dreamlike reportage that covers three decades (the 1960s to the 1980s), Lins contrasts the diminishing beauty of the nearby river and jungle with the growing ugliness of the crime-plagued, poverty-stricken project. He focuses mostly on the short, chaotic lives of gangsters, though he also keeps an eye on pot-smoking Rocket (perhaps a stand-in for Lins), a more gentle soul who escapes to become a photographer. Fernando Meirelles' film was cartoonishly violent, and although the book is startlingly so, Lins shows us more, chronicling longing, lust, ambition, superstition, hope, grief, and despair. With plot devices sometimes as minimal as the dawning of a new day, City of God seems more like a mosaic than a novel, but it's a mosaic with unforgettably vibrant colors. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat; 1 edition (September 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802170102
• ISBN-13: 978-0802170101
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #533,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Much more than the movie..., October 7, 2006

By 

Derek W. Lipscomb - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City of God: A Novel (Paperback)

Those familiar with the film will find almost instantly that it more or less borrows elements from this book and condenses story arcs. Rocket is not the narratator as in the film, and appears to be nothing more than a background character at first. His role still takes the inevitable course to photography. As with the movie the first part takes place during the early dawn of the City of God's development. the "Tender Trio" from the movie is a revolving door of characters with unfamiliar names. Segments like Hellraiser's pursuit of Berenice and the hotel heist are here as with many other elements. Other characters from the book become condensed in the film's take. The Lil' Dice/ Lil Ze'character becomes Pipsqueak and such. It truly is a flux of thoughts but becomes more involving with each page turn.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For fans of the movie....., February 1, 2007

By 

John P. James "Texican1973" (Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City of God: A Novel (Paperback)

The fact that the film didn't win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay proves that the Academy Awards are nothing more than a popularity contest. The chore of adapting this massive novel must have been an immense task (it took three drafts before they director and producers got a script they were satisfied with). What was on the screen was basically a summary of the novel.

For instance, Rocket is a minor character in the book, Lil Ze is based on a character named Tiny, and the 'Tender Trio' is based on the characters Squirt, Hellraiser and Hammer. Carrot (called 'Carrots'in the book) and Knockout Ned (simply called 'Knockout') are about the only characters in the book that fans of the movie will recognize right off the bat. There's no mention of The Runts specifically, but dozens of other youngsters are. So many characters are introduced and killed off that it was impossible for me to keep up, but fans of the movie will notice bits and pieces of specific characters. Almost all the characters in the film are creations from several other characters in the book.

The book is more violent than the film. Paulo Lins describes the massacred bodies in grafic detail. The last third of the book (well over 100 pages) deals with the war between Knockout and Tiny.

Cocaine and marijuana is mentioned repeatedly throughout the book. Almost every character seems to use or deal the drugs. The world of dope dealing is thouroughly investigated in this book.

Paulo Lins does an amazing job of telling the story of the City of God, but for me it was hard to keep up with the countless characters. The film makers did a great job of adapting this massive story. So if your a fan of the movie, and want to get a different perspective of this Brazilian hell-hole, then check out the book, just don't expect it to be just like the film.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life in poverty is not for the faint of heart ..., July 29, 2009

By 

G rated Grandma (Orlando, FL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of God: A Novel (Paperback)

For those who may think this is about St. Augustine's book, it's not. This movie is not for the faint of heart, so I well understand the 1 star reviewer who said his hand was trembling as he removed the DVD from his player. Slumdog Millionaire was a fairy tale while City of God is the real world of poverty where violence is brutal. FULL STOP. This film is for people who need or want to know.

During the time this movie was made there were 100,000 people involved in the drug trade in Rio. The City of Rio required 100,000 civil servants to run the city. The sole reason for the existence of the State (i.e., protection of the serfs) is taken over by the drug dealer (if you are in his good graces). Do you see what a government is competing with? As a result, the police in Rio are said to be the best trained urban street fighting outfit in the world because they have to operate like an army. How can there ever be enough money or police to stop the drug trade? Is it clear things have gotten out of control? And this is how it is all over the third world. So how did this happen? What do you do - you can't contain it within its favela walls? The job of the police is now to try to protect the neighborhoods of the rich and middle class. Is this the true state of capitalism with regard to rich and poor in most of the world? I fear City of God is just the tip of the iceberg.

Based on a true story, this movie is raw, unadulterated life in which people whose God is violence, sex, drugs or even a pair of Nikes are living and dying, where the family is the gang and manhood is proven in sadistic ways. Not being able to choose where you are born, how do you raise a child under these circumstances? If you are a missionary, how do you approach this place? How do you impart the wisdom of God to those who live by the wisdom of the world? Can you see how hard it is to save yourself? You have no bootstraps by which to pull yourself up if you have no boots. If as a viewer, you feel despair, how must it be for people who are raised in this beautiful place called hell who don't know they are living in hell but hell it is?

This is a groundbreaking film because it exposes everything naked before us, beautifully shot and acted by real children of the favelas. It is the place that should be envisioned when people want to practice their think tank-elitist theories on how to stop recruitment by Osama Bin Laden in the slums of Afghanistan or Pakistan or Palestine. Or how to continue a fight against drugs. Do the math. Understanding violence and its power is important by those of us who can't even dispose of a dead mouse in a mousetrap or who have never even seen one.

The film is based on a book of the same name. The director was given the book by a friend and told he needed to make this film. He said - I don't want to make a film about the favelas of Rio, but by page 100 he found himself making director's notes in the margin of the book. It is a great film and from a Christian perspective I believe despite the violence and cursing it is a must see film for anyone who wants to make a difference in the world or who is studying the human condition, including but not limited to diplomats, corporate CEOs, social scientists, social workers, cultural anthropologists, psychologists, criminal attorneys & missionaries. There is a documentary which accompanies this movie on the DVD which is excellent. City of God has a glimmer of hope with the