Chronicle of the Murdered House

About This Book

""The book itself is strange-part Faulknerian meditation on the perversities, including sexual, of degenerate country folk; part Dostoevskian examination of good and evil and God-but in its strangeness lies its rare power, and in the sincerity and seriousness with which the essential questions are posed lies its greatness."--Benjamin Moser, from the introduction. Long considered one of the most important works of twentieth-century Brazilian literature, Chronicle of the Murdered House is finally available in English. Set in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the novel relates the dissolution of a once proud patriarchal family now represented by Timoteo, a gay scion who wanders the ancestral mansion dressed in his mother's clothes. This downfall, peppered by stories of decadence, adultery, incest, and madness, is related through a variety of narrative devices, including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters. Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968) turned away from the social realism fashionable in 1930s Brazil and opened the doors of Brazilian literature to introspective works such as those of Clarice Lispector-his greatest follower and admirer."--