National Book Award for Translated Literature
The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections
The Collector of Leftover Souls gathers Eliane Brum’s reportage on marginalized people and places in Brazil in English translation. Through the Amazon, favelas, care homes, and gold-rush landscapes, it portrays everyday resistance and dignity.
Work Information
The voices of people often overlooked illuminate contemporary Brazil from another angle.
Selected from two Portuguese-language books, the volume presents a polyphonic portrait of life between Brazil’s cities and forests. In places marked by extraction, violence, care, and poverty, it follows how people make meaning and joy.
Review Summaries
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The book is valued for its closeness to its subjects and for refusing to reduce people to victims. Even while addressing social problems, it preserves the complexity of individual lives.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Graywolf Pr
- Published
- 2019-10-15
- Pages
- 222 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.43 x 1.8 x 21.06 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781644450055
- ISBN-10
- 1644450054
- Price
- 3365 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Education & Reference/Writing, Research & Publishing Guides/Writing/Journalism & Nonfiction
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature Urgent investigative essays covering a wide range of humanity in Brazil, from the Amazon to the favelas Eliane Brum is a star journalist in Brazil, known for her polyphonic writing that gives voice to people often underrepresented in popular literature. Brum’s reporting takes her into Brazil’s most marginalized communities: she visits the Amazon to understand the practice of indigenous midwives, stays in São Paulo’s favelas to witness the joy of a marriage and the tragedy of young men dying due to drugs and guns, and wades through the mud to capture the boom and bust of modern-day gold rushes. Brum is an enormously sensitive and perceptive interlocutor, and as she visits these places she provides intimate glimpses into both everyday and extraordinary lives: a poor father on the way to bury his son, a street performer who eats glass, a woman living out her final 115 days, and a hoarder rescuing the “leftover souls” of the city. The Collector of Leftover Souls showcases the best of Brum’s work from two books, combining short profiles with longer reported pieces . These vibrant missives range across current issues such as the human cost of exploiting natural resources, the Belo Monté Dam’s eradication of a way of life for those on the banks of the Xingu River, and the contrast between urban centers and remote villages. Told in the vibrant and idiomatic language of the people Brum writes about, The Collector of Leftover Souls is a vital work of investigative journalism from an internationally acclaimed author.
Eliane Brum is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker, and the author of five books of nonfiction and the novel One Two. She has won more than forty journalism prizes and honors, is a columnist for El País , and collaborates with The Guardian .
Reviews
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Ótimo livro da ótima escritora e jornalista Eliane Brum. Ela escreve com sensibilidade, envolvimento e entusiasmo. Todos seus livros são maravilhosos.
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Great stories and writing.. excellent!!!
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Great set of disparate stories of modern day Brazil. From the favalas of São Paulo to the mishandling of the Amazon rainforest. Only downside is it’s not long enough