Some books have striking characters in their stories, others have cities that are just as striking as those that are part of the story. São Paulo is the kind of city that has this potential. She steals the show, integrates herself into the story and even becomes as important as the person who makes it happen. That’s why we’ve put together a list of five books set in São Paulo.
They were many horses, by Luiz Ruffato
Although the book deals with the city of São Paulo, it is written from the perspective of the author from Minas Gerais in relation to the gray city. All the action in the book takes place in a single day. The precise location of the action is appears right at the start: São Paulo, May 9, 2000. The book portrays multiple events in the city of São Paulo through short independent texts. We are quickly exposed to texts that express what could be a minimal snapshot of an aerial view of the megalopolis.
Capão Pecado, by Ferréz
This book tells the story of Rael, a boy who dreams of being a writer and has fallen in love with his best friend’s girlfriend. In this book, the author seeks to expose the codes, the daily life of Capão Redondo, a region on the outskirts of São Paulo. A landmark of marginal literature, the title turned Ferréz into a reference in the struggle for a voice that always speaks, but is never heard. But now, read on.
Brás, Bexiga and Barra Funda, by Antônio de Alcântara Machado
The stories in the book reflect the integration of Italian immigrants in São Paulo. Written in a peculiar language, they are distinguished by their Italian-Brazilian vocabulary. A real journey back in time through historical records of the city in the 1930s.
The sun sets on São Paulo, by Bernardo Carvalho
Set in the Liberdade neighborhood and in a Japanese pavilion in Paraíso, this romance without borders unites the Osaka of yesteryear with the São Paulo of today. Setsuko, the owner of a Japanese restaurant, asks a customer if he is a writer and begins to narrate a plot linked to the Second World War, which shows one of the most terrible facets of contemporary history, both in Japan and in Brazil. From then on, the book intertwines times and spaces that the reader would think were essentially separate.
The Girls, by Lygia Fagundes Telles
Three young university students share a nuns’ boarding house in the city of São Paulo in the late 1960s, when the military dictatorship was imposing itself on Brazilian society. Lorena is studying law to pursue a career; Lia has dropped out of Social Sciences to make the revolution; Ana Clara takes drugs, goes to a psychoanalyst and wants to get together with a rich old man.
