Abstract
The Jewish-Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar explores Brazilian cultural multiplicity and its attendant tensions in his novel O centauro no jardim. The protagonist, a Russian Jewish-Brazilian centaur, stages the confrontation between lived interiority and collective exteriority, as he succumbs to society's assimilationist pressures that vie for symbolic expression on his unusual body. The novel's ethnic and somatic inflections highlight the effects of negotiating differences in the construction of identities. The narrative is humorous and fanciful, but at the same time incorporates a serious urgency to examine and call into question contempo- rary Brazilian representations of cultural heterogeneity.
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