Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian novel comes from and still feeds on the desire to make sense of the mixing of social spaces and the fate of those who have shapedmoments of contact amongunequals. The quest for change and fitting in is often presented retrospectively, and in many cases it results in a search for puzzling family ties. From its beginnings to recent prizewinning works, one can chart across time how plots, structures, trends, authors, and their readership have relied on an intricate interplay between displacement, troubled origins, and the possibilities for a new self. Typically, social exile—or a journey if within the protagonist's own community—is paired with the ubiquity of an absent father figure. The conflict between past expectations and the limited opportunities protagonists have to reconnect or fulfill their hopes yields the grounds for the negotiation between opposing agendas: formal and colloquial registers, highbrow and lowbrow cultures, urban and regional spaces. Time and again the Brazilian novel reinvents the quest of Telemachus as a way of probing nationality, affective loss, and social compromise.