internationally acclaimed novelist, Miarcio Souza. In his best known work, Galvez, Imperador do Acre, Souza parodies the romantic adventure narrative of the last century.' He satirizes historical, political and social institutions in a book that serves as an excellent example of the contemporary Brazilian antinovel. Carlos Felipe Moises considers Souza ... das mais fortes vocaC6es de contador de hist6rias dos Uiltimos tempos, em literatura brasileira (67). Mois6s also draws an interesting antinovelistic parallel: ... Galvez guarda ainda muita afinidade com nosso 'her6i sem nenhum cariter,' o Macunaima de Mairio de Andrade (68). In Galvez, Imperador do Acre, absurdity evolves as an ontological given. Through his fiction Souza attempts to find meaning in ... a disintegrating world without unifying principle, without meaning, without purpose; an absurd universe (Harris 17). In this work the aesthetics of the absurd is a constant concern, not only in the novelist's vision of man, but also in the ironic structure which frames this vision. A critical consider-