Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.
The Slum. A Novel.
Azevedo, Aluisio. Ed(S): Rosenthal, David H.; Graham, Richard; Sant'Anna, Alfonso Romano de
€ 37.61
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for The Slum. A Novel.
Paperback. Published in 1890, The Slum is a tale of passion and greed with two intersecting story lines: a penny-pinching immigrant landlord who becomes a rich capitalist and discards his black lover for a wealthy white woman; and the innocent love affair between the immigrant and a mulata who live in a tenement owned by this landlord. Editor(s): Rosenthal, David H.; Graham, Richard; Sant'Anna, Alfonso Romano de. Series: Library of Latin America. Num Pages: 240 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: FA; FC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 217 x 142 x 17. Weight in Grams: 344.
First published in 1890, and undoubtedly Azevedo's masterpiece, The Slum is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed novels ever written about Brazil. Indeed, its great popularity, realistic descriptions, archetypal situations, detailed local coloring, and overall race-consciousness may well evoke Huckleberry Finn as the novel's North American equivalent. Yet Azevedo also exhibits the naturalism of Zola and the ironic distance of Balzac; while tragic, beautiful, and imaginative as a work of fiction, The Slum is universally regarded as one of the best, or truest, portraits of Brazilian society ever rendered.This is a vivid and complex tale of passion and greed, a story with many different strands touching on the different economic tiers of society. Mainly, however, The Slum thrives on two intersecting story lines. In one narrative, a penny-pinching immigrant landlord strives to become a rich investor and then discards his black lover for a wealthy white woman. In the other, we witness the innocent yet dangerous love affair between a strong, pragmatic, "gentle giant" sort of immigrant and a vivacious mulatto woman who both live in a tenement owned by said landlord. The two immigrant heroes are originally Portuguese, and thus personify two alternate outsider responses to Brazil. As translator David H. Rosenthal points out in his useful Introduction: one is the capitalist drawn to new markets, quick prestige, and untapped resources; the other, the prudent European drawn moth-like to "the light and sexual heat of the tropics."A deftly told, deeply moving, and hardscrabble novel that features several stirring passages about life in the streets, the melting-pot realities of the modern city, and the oft-unstable mind of the crowd, The Slum will captivate anyone who might appreciate a more poetic, less political take on the nineteenth-century naturalism of Crane or Dreiser.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2000
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc United States
Number of pages
240
Condition
New
Series
Library of Latin America
Number of Pages
240
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780195121872
SKU
V9780195121872
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-20
About Azevedo, Aluisio. Ed(S): Rosenthal, David H.; Graham, Richard; Sant'Anna, Alfonso Romano de
The Brazilian novelist Aluísio Azevedo (1857-1913) was also the author of A Woman's Tear, The Mulatto, and several other works. The late David H. Rosenthal was an accomplished translator of works from the Catalan (from 15th-century classics to modern poetry) and also wrote essays and books on many other topics, including Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965 (OUP, 1992).
Reviews for The Slum. A Novel.
Previous praise for the Library of Latin America series: "Language has always been a barrier to our unity as the Americas, and most especially to our reading of each other's literatures. Now with this new series by Oxford University Press, the library of Latin America is literally open to North Americans and to English speakers everywhere. This is an important series for anyone who is prevented from knowing the classics of the southern half of this hemisphere because of not knowing the language. !Bienvenidos to these new readers!"
Julia Alvarez "Azevedo had trained to be an artist, and his strong eye shows in his prose....[He] traveled with his sketchbook to Rio's slums, returning home to render the visual into words. The Slum is the sort of novel Tom Wolfe ordered his colleages to write, a Great American Novel with great American themes, notably greed and race....Brazil still has slums and races...this reality, along with Azevedo's descriptive brilliance, serpentine plotting, comedy and the ample helpings of sex and violence, explains why Brazilians still read The Slum."
The New York Times Book Review Previous praise for the Library of Latin America series "Language has always been a barrier to our unity as the Americas, and most especially to our reading of each other's literatures. Now with this new series by Oxford University Press, the library of Latin America is literally open to North Americans and to English speakers everywhere. This is an important series for anyone who is prevented from knowing the classics of the southern half of this hemisphere because of not knowing the language. !Bienvenidos to these new readers!"
Julia Alvarez "With the Library of Latin America, Oxford has opened up a new frontier that may prove as exciting and enigmatic as the continent itself."
The Herald (South Carolina) "The most significant publishing event in Latin American literature in this country since the Boom of the 1960s."
The Wall Street Journal
Julia Alvarez "Azevedo had trained to be an artist, and his strong eye shows in his prose....[He] traveled with his sketchbook to Rio's slums, returning home to render the visual into words. The Slum is the sort of novel Tom Wolfe ordered his colleages to write, a Great American Novel with great American themes, notably greed and race....Brazil still has slums and races...this reality, along with Azevedo's descriptive brilliance, serpentine plotting, comedy and the ample helpings of sex and violence, explains why Brazilians still read The Slum."
The New York Times Book Review Previous praise for the Library of Latin America series "Language has always been a barrier to our unity as the Americas, and most especially to our reading of each other's literatures. Now with this new series by Oxford University Press, the library of Latin America is literally open to North Americans and to English speakers everywhere. This is an important series for anyone who is prevented from knowing the classics of the southern half of this hemisphere because of not knowing the language. !Bienvenidos to these new readers!"
Julia Alvarez "With the Library of Latin America, Oxford has opened up a new frontier that may prove as exciting and enigmatic as the continent itself."
The Herald (South Carolina) "The most significant publishing event in Latin American literature in this country since the Boom of the 1960s."
The Wall Street Journal