Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga? : A B-Novel (Texas Pan American Series)
Award-winning Brazilian writer Abreu's posthumously translated novel is a masterful, multidimensional account of a cynic's journey to self-knowledge. Seemingly a densely plotted homage to Dashiell Hammett's Phillip Marlowe, the story's action focuses on a nameless and existentially empty Brazilian journalist who's fallen on hard times. He lands a job finding and reporting on Dulce Veiga, a famous singer who vanished 20 years prior. His quest leads him through Sao Paulo's underground, where he encounters rock musicians, transvestites, hustlers, smack, crack, and gay Pietas. His descent into this contemporary inferno is rendered in seven sections, each corresponding to a day of the week, over which is woven a delicate web of symbols referencing AfroBrazilian cults and their gods, ororixas. Part literary detective story, part spiritual quest, the journalist's search is set to a streaming cacophony of snippets from various cults, American pulp fiction, songs, and films. Not since Alfred Appel's annotatedLolitaclarified the subtle wordplay and allusions found in Nabokov's masterpiece has there been such an accessible assemblage beneath the packaging of compelling entertainment, all neatly explicated by translator Frizzi's analysis and glossary of terms.Whitney ScottCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.