A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions [Paperback]

Peter Robb (Author)

Book Description

Series: John MacRae Books | Publication Date: April 14, 2005

Deliciously sensuous and fascinating, Robb renders in vivid detail the intoxicating pleasures of Brazil’s food, music, literature, and landscape as he travels not only cross country but also back in time—from the days of slavery to modern day political intrigue and murder. Spellbinding and revelatory, Peter Robb paints a multi-layered portrait of Brazil as a country of intoxicating and passionate extremes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The death of the title refers to a recent event, but Times Literary Supplement writer Robb gets his mysterious subtitle most directly from Machado de Assis, a 19th-century Brazilian novelist considered at length for his ability to weave discussion of the nation's racial and economic disparities into his wildly popular serial fictions for women's magazines. The term's origins, however, are biblical; First and Second Chronicles were called "Omissions" because they contained information left out of the preceding Books of Kings. Although Robb tries to fill in some of the gaps in recent Brazilian history, he doesn't so much uncover new data on the spectacularly corrupt 1990â€"1992 presidency of Fernando Collor as pull together some of the many disparate sources. Collor's rise and fall, and the murder of his chief henchman, form a solid backbone for the book, but one from which Robb frequently wanders to ruminate on centuries of Brazilian history filled with eroticism and violent upheaval. He also recounts his own travels through modern Brazil, devoting as much attention to the sensual delights of buchada de bode (stuffed goat's stomach) as he does to a threatening encounter with the military police. The overall result is a bit of a jumble, but it's a delightful jumble: a Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with a Latin beat. At various points, Robb compares the unfolding Collor scandal to the soap opera staples of Brazilian television, and he's managed to capture the story's lurid surrealism with a deft, erudite touch.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

One night twenty years ago in Rio de Janeiro, the author was attacked by a knife-wielding burglar, who then broke down and stayed until dawn, unburdening his soul. Robb became fascinated with Brazil, and here offers a seductive synthesis of history, gastronomy, literature, pop culture, and current events. He is most drawn to the landscape of the northeast. Once home to communities of escaped slaves, the region has, more recently, produced such figures as the disgraced President Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached in 1992, and Luis (Lula) Inácio da Silva, a former metalworker who was elected President a decade later. Between the mouthwatering dishes and caipirinhas, Robb explores the extreme contrasts of wealth and poverty, beauty and brutality—tens of thousands of violent deaths each year—in what he considers the "most thrilling country in the Western Hemisphere."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Picador (April 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312424876
• ISBN-13: 978-0312424879
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #227,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #34 in Books > Travel > Latin America > South America > Brazil
  • #63 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Brazil

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding impressionistic portrayal of Brazil, August 12, 2004

By 

T. Stroll (Oakland, Calif., USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions (John MacRae Books) (Hardcover)

"A Death in Brazil" is more than a mere personal memoir, travelogue, or political history. Rather, it combines all three, creating a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, a vivid, impressionistic tableau of Brazilian life and culture in which Robb interlaces past and present in a compelling, sometimes seamless manner.

If you've spent much time in Brazil, Robb's brushstrokes of local color will bring back many memories. In my case, "A Death in Brazil" evoked a scary taxi ride in Maceio in Brazil's northeast in 1989; the mold encrusting the walls of a cheap hotel in Salvador in 1984, flavoring the room with a smell that I can still detect almost as soon as I set foot in the country; the protests for eleicoes direitas ja (direct elections now) in 1984, toward the end of military rule. Even the cover photo, of old pastel houses and people lingering aimlessly in their doorways to escape the stifling indoor heat, brings back memories of Rio de Janeiro's Gloria neighborhood, where in 1984 my hotel charged U.S. $3.20 a day for a room with intermittent air conditioning (depending on the mood of the reception desk) and private bath (thankfully with a gas-powered hot shower, rather than the uncertain chuveiro eletrico with wires dangling ominously behind the shower head, which always forced a choice between the promise of hot water and the possibility of sudden electrocution). The last time I was in Rio, in 2000, the hotel was more like $40 a day, and it had installed bulletproof glass to protect the reception desk from street crime. Armed violence is now a serious problem in urban Brazil; the urbane news presenter Boris Casoy devotes much of the Record Network television news to it. I went to Brazil twice in 2000, but a daily dose of the "Jornal da Record" newscast on satellite TV is scaring me from returning.

For those who know little about the country, much of what Robb describes may seem mysterious, as though he were venturing into the Africa of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Speaking of which, Robb's encyclopedic knowledge encompasses a mention of Conrad's voyage to the Congo River on the "Ville de Maceio" in 1890, and allows him to bring in figures ranging from Roger Casement to Fernando Ramos da Silva, the star of the critically acclaimed 1981 movie "Pixote, a lei do mais fraco."

Not only is Robb extremely knowledgeable, but his writing is first-rate (why does the British Commonwealth continue to produce so much fine and subtle writing?). He fills his narrative with imagery like this: "It was dark now, so damp the air was palpable, and silent outside. The smell of rank plaster filled the little room. It was peeling off the blue-washed walls in foamy patches. . . . In the world outside a fine and soundless rain was falling and a scarf of tiny droplets floated under the bulb of a yellow streetlight." (Pp. 305-306.)

Robb's political perspective is to the left of mine and probably that of most American readers. As a result, I occasionally found fault with aspects of his book. Robb rhapsodizes over Lula (Luis Inacio Lula da Silva), the current Brazilian president, but suggests, explicitly or implicitly, that Lula's predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was a neoliberal who did much to placate international capital and little to ease Brazil's vast disparities in wealth and income. I think the election of Lula is of enormous historical importance and has the potential to bring revolutionary change to relations between the developed and less-developed worlds. But I regret the portrayal of Cardoso, a distinguished centrist whose achievements include taming inflation, an astonishing feat that benefits Lula's administration every day. The Brazilian currency, the real, is essentially stable against the U.S. dollar, and that too is thanks to Cardoso, and to Lula's continuation of many of Cardoso's policies.

Nevertheless, Robb's ruminations on Brazilian society, culture, and mores are among the best I've read, and I highly recommend "A Death in Brazil."

81 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "A death in Brazil" and its sources, September 6, 2004

By 

Mario Sergio Conti - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions (John MacRae Books) (Hardcover)

I have also researched one of the subjects with which A Death in Brazil deals, namely the election, government and impeachment of Fernando Collor, the former President of Brazil. From 1991 to 1997, I was managing editor at Veja, the magazine with the widest circulation in Brazil, which played an influential role in bringing about Collor's impeachment. In 1992, I received the Editor of the Year Award from the World Press Review for Veja's coverage during the period.


At the end of 1999, after almost two years of full-time writing, I finished my 720-page book on the subject, entitled Notícias do Planalto: A imprensa e Fernando Collor (News From the Planalto: The press and Fernando Collor). In writing the book I interviewed 140 people and read more than a hundred books. Notícias do Planalto was a bestseller in Brazil, selling more than 80,000 copies.


Peter Robb invited me to lunch in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of 2001. Robb praised Notícias do Planalto and told me of his plans to write a book about Brazil, Fernando Collor and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. I recommended that he read certain books and gave him phone numbers for both Collor and Lula da Silva. I never heard from him again.


When I read A Death in Brazil I was rather shocked. There were nineteen passages in Robb's book that were startlingly similar to passages in Notícias do Planalto. What we are dealing with here is not simply use of information, as is normal in intellectual work. The fact is that entire sentences, lines of reasoning and images recur with only a few words changed. I have prepared translated transcripts of the passages in question from Notícias do Planalto and the corresponding passages from A Death in Brazil.


Robb mentions my book only once. On page 313, in the section "Sources and Readings", he says that Notícias do Planalto is a "very fluid and complete account of Fernando's fast rise and faster fall as seen by the journalists of Brazilian press and television, not least of whom [is] the author". This mention in no way justifies the use Peter Robb seems to have made of my book. One wonders if he would have used my book so freely had it been published in English.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Preparation for Travel in Brazil, August 23, 2005

By 

Karen Seashore (Sandpoint, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions (John MacRae Books) (Hardcover)

Last October, I ordered Peter Robb's "A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions," paying for hardcover on the strength of its reviews. It was worth the price. And well worth the weight. I hauled it around in my rucksack for during a four-week trip in the state of Bahia. Being a story hog, I generally read fiction written by local authors when I travel. But this nonfiction kept me fascinated throughout. As a visitor with little information about Brazil, I found the book gave me a tremendous headstart on the culture, the political history, the food, the population and TV. With many quirky details.

Robb's mix of political history, personal travelogue, and ideology sustained me throughout. After I gobbled up the book, my husband read it. A fellow traveler borrowed it and read it in two days. Then a Brazilian friend insisted I leave it for her and now I'm ordering the book in paperback to take with me this winter when I return to Bahia.