Vertiginous Life: Bilingual Edition

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Rio de Janeiro in 1911 was a venerable city in a new republic just a generation old. The people of Rio felt as new as the new century. A new culture of immigration and education blossomed. New technologies of machinery–Automobiles! Airplanes!–advanced with blinding speed. Feminism! Advertisement! Democracy! Global travel! New journalism! Tea, slander, migrant camps, uppity servants! Life in Rio de Janeiro was dizzying. Vertiginous.

In the giddy swirl of modernity, literary journalist Joao do Rio aimed his critical eye at a great city and society in transformation. His collection of articles, Vida Vertiginosa, is presented here for the first time in the English language. It ranks with his Religions in Rio as a classic of Brazilian nonfiction.

Joao do Rio was a journalist way ahead of his time. A man of the streets, the people, the bars and restaurants, sui generis, dapper and openly gay, he approached reportage with a style all his own. He saw what others did not see, and he wrote about it with inimitable linguistic flare.

Ana Lessa-Schmidt’s brilliant translation captures Joao do Rio’s unique style of disregarding grammar to present the essence of a scene.