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 God is 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. When City of God erupted 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 God began 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 God is 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

See all Editorial Reviews

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: 5.2 x 1.3 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

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

By John P. James

Format: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. Read more ›

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

Format: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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Numbing February 10, 2012

By Reader in Tokyo

Format:Paperback

This novel came out in 1997 and was translated into English in 2006. It was apparently based on real events known to the author. Parts of it were dramatized in 2002 in the stylistically dazzling, award-winning film by Fernando Meirelles.

The action was set in a suburb of Rio, in one of the hundreds of favelas that are estimated currently to house some 20% of the population. Most of the slum residents are working people; the focus here was on the criminal minority. The book's three chapters zipped through the 1960s, early 70s and late 70s/early 80s, a time of rising crime and exponential growth of Rio's slums.

The content was monotonous -- intentionally so, it was assumed. For hundreds of pages, boy after boy in the slum turned to crime, robbed and killed, dreamed of escaping the cycle of violence and was murdered. Most of the violence revolved around squabbling over territory and money, drug-dealing and revenge killings. Brothers and friends were sucked into the endless cycle. This was a world of boys and young men, the women were accessories.

The "characters" numbered in the hundreds, most of them known only through nicknames -- Squirt, Tiny, Slick, Knockout -- and appearing sporadically. Other than, say, Knockout, who was sucked in deeper and deeper against his will, they were very limited in dimension. The body count was high, accelerating toward the end. The violence wasn't glamorized; most characters lived squalid, pathetic lives. The morality was stern: those who turned to the most serious crimes died violently; only a few of the more innocent hangers-on succeeded in escaping. Well before the end, the repetition had grown numbing.

Naturally the book contained many more storylines and characters than the film, which compressed much very skillfully.... And the book paid little attention to the positive character named Rocket, who was made the film's narrator and protagonist.

The back cover referred to the author's years of research and firsthand experience of the slums. Despite this, the novel contained little background -- political or otherwise -- on how the slums got started and were allowed to continue.

A book of reportage on the city's slums in general is Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro (2011), by Janice Perlman. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Rare Occasion Where the Movie Beats Out the Book February 14, 2011

By Benjamin faresich

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Most people coming here to look up this novel are likely already fans of the film. This is one of the rare cases where the movie is actually much better than the book. That's not to say that the book is bad. It is a decent novel, but with some issues.
For one thing, some of the writing seems a little bit simplistic at times. I have to wonder if this is due to Lins' style, or if some things get a little lost in the translation.

A bigger issue is that there are way too many characters to keep up with, and only a precious few of them are developed enough for them to leave a mark on your memory. The trouble with that is that characters' start blending together. Add to that the fact that the story tends to jump around quite often. You'll be reading about a moment in the life of one character, when the story will take an abrupt turn to that of another, and it can be confusing to try to follow. I would have liked to see more focus on some of the major characters, rather than bits and pieces about the myriad criminal exploits of probably 20 or so characters. It's as if you keep waiting for a particular part of the story to peak, and it never really seems to. It simply branches off into another section of the story, which will likely end up in more violence.

On the other hand, I have to allow for the possibility that this was maybe Lins' intention. That the lives of these lost souls in the slums of Brazil just blend together in this sea of tragedy and hopelessness. Each person is just another cog in the wheel of violence. I can appreciate that. The novel's lack of structure may not make for the best reading experience, but it is somewhat unique....

For fans of the movie, it's worth a read, if for nothing else than to see what inspired Fernando Meirelles' cinematic masterpiece. Read more ›