The Front

Winner of the Sao Paulo Prize for Best Book of the Year, The Front by Edimilson de Almeida Pereira introduces us to a nameless figure who refers to himself only as a "man-tree." He lives beneath the din of police helicopters and beside an imposing garbage dump, where, as a child, he'd hunt for books. How will he respond to a system that attempts, relentlessly, through its tedium and violence, to silence him?

This separation between there and here, between them and us, transformed the child in me too soon into an adult. There's something painful in this development, from being a child burning with joy, despite his own fear, to becoming a man who, every minute of the day, holds himself back from setting the world on fire.

The Front is an astonishingly original novel, one that nevertheless brings to mind James Baldwin's unflinching critique of modern society and Clarice Lispector's daring experiments with language. The Front introduces to English-language readers an important, deeply poetic voice from contemporary Brazil.