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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > The Shape of Bones

The Shape of Bones

From one of Brazil’s foremost literary voices comes a gripping, visceral new novel about youth, power and the nature of manhood. A man rises at 5 a.m. and leaves his home. He does not wake his wife or child to bid them goodbye. He starts his car – an SUV filled with survival gear – but does not drive to his friend’s house as planned. Instead, he glides through the sleeping streets of Porto Alegre, haunted by ghosts of himself: the fearless boy riding a battered stunt bike, the silent adolescent fascinated by bodies and violence, the obsessive young surgeon, the distant husband. As the dawn comes on and people slowly fill the streets, the man drives unthinkingly, inexorably, toward the old neighbourhood of his youth. What is pulling him back there? Perhaps the need to make something happen, perhaps just nostalgia. Or perhaps the search for absolution – from a crime he has carried in his heart for fifteen years.

Author

Daniel Galera

Daniel Galera

Books

The Shape of Bones

Daniel Galera was born in Sao Paulo in 1979. He co-founded the influential publishing house Livros do Mal, and has translated David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith and Irvine Welsh into Brazilian Portuguese. He has published a collection of short stories and three novels, including Blood-Drenched Beard, as well as an acclaimed graphic novel (with Rafael Coutinho).

Translator

Alison Entrekin

Alison Entrekin

Books

The House in Smyrna

The Shape of Bones

Alison Entrekin has translated a number of works by Brazilian and Portuguese authors into English, including City of God by Paulo Lins and Budapest by Chico Buarque, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the United Kingdom. Originally from Australia, she now lives in Brazil.

Published by

Hamish Hamilton, 2017
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From one of Brazil’s foremost literary voices comes a gripping, visceral new novel about youth, power and the nature of manhood. A man rises at 5 a.m. and leaves his home. He does not wake his wife or child to bid them goodbye. He starts his car – an SUV filled with survival gear – but does not drive to his friend’s house as planned. Instead, he glides through the sleeping streets of Porto Alegre, haunted by ghosts of himself: the fearless boy riding a battered stunt bike, the silent adolescent fascinated by bodies and violence, the obsessive young surgeon, the distant husband. As the dawn comes on and people slowly fill the streets, the man drives unthinkingly, inexorably, toward the old neighbourhood of his youth. What is pulling him back there? Perhaps the need to make something happen, perhaps just nostalgia. Or perhaps the search for absolution – from a crime he has carried in his heart for fifteen years.

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