Milton Hatoum e o regionalismo revisitado

Abstract

This article analyzes the two novels of the Amazonian writer Milton Hatoum—Relato de um certo Oriente (1989) and Dois irmaos (2000)—as both revisiting and revitalizing regionalism—a classic stream of Brazilian fiction—while adding innovative nuances to it. Taking advantage of contributions belonging to classical urban literary matrices, both modern and contemporary, already incorporated into Brazilian fiction, Hatoum re-examines their regional contents, composing a hybrid tissue that keeps alive all of its sources and that in turn passes on the inheritance received from them. In this way, he rescues the specific identity of the tradition and prevents its transformation into a multicultural text.