Ciccio already has many problems: romantic failure, an older brother who seems intent on breaking the heart of every beautiful woman in São Paulo, a distant and larger-than-life father. When Ciccio finds, among the many of his father’s books that line the walls of their house, a troubling letter dated ‘December 21, 1931. Berlin’, his existential crisis only intensifies. It seems that his father once had a child with another woman – a German son whose fate remains unclear. Ciccio sets out on a mission to locate his lost half-brother, and to win the respect of his father. But as Brazil's military government cracks down on dissent, and rumours of arrests and disappearances spread, while Ciccio has been out looking for his German brother, he finds that he has taken his eye off his immediate family . . . In writing My German Brother, acclaimed Brazilian novelist and musician Chico Buarque was driven by the desire to find out what happened to his own German half-brother – whether he survived the war in a bomb-ravaged Berlin, whether he had joined the ranks of the Hitler Youth. His novel has been a project of a lifetime, one that makes use of what happened, what might have happened, and pure imagination, in order to weave together the threads of narrative and arrive at a truth.

The revered Brazilian songwriter and novelist “has breathed the story of a whole country into a single, unforgettable man with a soul as big as Brazil” (Nicole Krauss, author of Forest Dark). As Eulálio d’Assumpção lies dying in a Brazilian public hospital, his daughter and the attending nurses are treated—whether they like it or not—to his last, rambling monologue. Ribald, hectoring, and occasionally delusional, Eulálio reflects on his past, present, and future—on his privileged, plantation-owning family; his father’s philandering with beautiful French whores; his own half-hearted career as a weapons dealer; the eventual decline of the family fortune; and his passionate courtship of the wife who would later abandon him. Through Eulálio’s journey across the twists and turns of his own fragmented memories, Buarque conjures an evocative portrait of a man’s life and love, while bringing to life the broad sweep of Brazilian history. At once jubilant and painfully nostalgic, playful and devastatingly urgent, readers of the award-winning Spilt Milk will find themselves “in the hands of a master storyteller” (The Plain Dealer). “In Spilt Milk [Buarque] confronts the themes that make Brazil squirm, from the stain of slavery to the inferiority complex the country has historically felt when it compares itself to Europe.” —The New York Times “Lovely details and a fine sense of place . . . Echoing Sebald’s Rings of Saturn . . . There’s plenty to like.” —Publishers Weekly “One of the saddest love stories, and one of the truest.” —Nicole Krauss

Chico Buarque comprises a critical appreciation of the self-titled album (1978), which is one of the Brazilian artist's most representative. This vibrant collection displays the singer-songwriter's singular talents as a composer/poet of songs with both popular appeal and keen analytical skills. The 11 tracks include both up-beat sambas and lyrical compositions: witty tunes, dramatic laments, international items, and, especially, epochal protest songs with fascinating histories. The album embodies Chico Buarque's affective sensibilities and sociopolitical engagement, and this book situates the album in inter-related contexts: the artist's own career; the evolution of the current he represents MPB (Brazilian Popular Music); and, especially, historical conjuncture-the period of military dictatorship in Brazil, 1964-85.

Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Roots of Brazil is one of the iconic books on Brazilian history, society, and culture. Originally published in 1936, it appears here for the first time in an English language translation with a foreword, "Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?" by Pedro Meira Monteiro, one of the world's leading experts on Buarque de Holanda. Roots of Brazil focuses on the multiple cultural influences that forged twentieth-century Brazil, especially those of the Portuguese, the Spanish, other European colonists, Native Americans, and Africans. Buarque de Holanda argues that all of these originary influences were transformed into a unique Brazilian culture and society—a "transition zone." The book presents an understanding of why and how European culture flourished in a large, tropical environment that was totally foreign to its traditions, and the manner and consequences of this development. Buarque de Holanda uses Max Weber’s typological criteria to establish pairs of "ideal types" as a means of stressing particular characteristics of Brazilians, while also trying to understand and explain the local historical process. Along with other early twentieth-century works such as The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil by Caio Prado Júnior, Roots of Brazil set the parameters of Brazilian historiography for a generation and continues to offer keys to understanding the complex history of Brazil. Roots of Brazil has been published in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German, and French. This long-awaited English translation will interest students and scholars of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Latin American history, culture, literature, and postcolonial studies.

The narrator of this tale is haunted by nostalgia for the places of his childhood set in a city that can only be Rio de Janeiro. A drop-out from the privileged world of luxury beach apartments and sybaritic obsessions, he has entered the "other" Brazil of wretched poverty and petty crime.

At the height of Tim Maia's soaring fame, he joined a radical, extraterrestrial-obsessed cult and created two plus albums of some of Brazil's-and the globe's-best funk and soul music. This book explores the career of the man often hailed as the James Brown or Barry White of Brazil, and the time of his radical transformation from a musician notorious for hedonistic living to a devoted follower of Manoel Jacinto Coelho's Rational Culture. After suddenly joining Coelho's cult in 1974 (which started first as an offshoot of the mystical Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda), Maia gave up drugs and alcohol, threw away his material possessions, and released Racional Vols. 1 & 2 in the attempt to convert the entirety of Brazil and the world to the revelation of Rational Culture. Thayer explores this strange, brief, yet incredibly prolific period of Maia's life wherein the reigning soul and funk artist of Brazil produced two albums, an EP, and a recently unearthed tape containing almost another full album of funky jams laced with spiritual content and scripture. For just as quickly as Maia became entranced with Coelho did he become disillusioned with the cult, disavowing and destroying everything having to do with that experience and refusing to speak of it for the rest of his life. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-based books and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.