A masterpiece of magical realism by one of Brazil’s most celebrated novelists. The Wisconsin edition is for sale only in the United States

The Centaur in the Garden (THE AMERICAS)

SCLIAR, MOACYR

Literature & Fiction

University of Wisconsin Press

A centaur recounts his family's flight from Russia to settle in Brazil, and describes how an operation changed his life

The Centaur in the Garden

Contemporary

Ballantine Books

Focuses on one catastrophic day in the life of businessman Rafael Mendes, weaving together stories of his ancestors and occurrences of the present as Mendes learns how the past informs and shackles the present

The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes

Ballad of the False Messiah

A centaur, Guedali, recounts his family's flight from Russia to settle in Brazil and describes how an operation changed his life

Centaur in the Garden

Chronicles the imaginative, phantasmagorial adventures of a young woman, Raquel, the daughter of a Brazilian-Jewish parents, a prize convent-school student, and lover of Miguel

Gods of Raquel

Max Schmidt, the son of a furrier, escapes from the Nazi authorities in his native Germany and boards a ship bound for Brazil, but when the ship sinks, he is stranded in a lifeboat with only a jaguar for company

Max and the Cats

Literary

Max Schmidt grew up in the stockroom of his father's fur store, cloaked among the foxes, minks, and leopards, hiding from the glaring eyes of a stuffed tiger atop the wardrobe. It is here he dreams of traveling to distant lands; and here, as a young man, he begins an affair with the store's married clerk. Forced to flee when his lover's husband discovers the affair and denounces Max to the Nazi secret police, Max steals away to Hamburg, where he takes passage on a freighter destined for disaster. When the ship founders somewhere off the coast of South America, Max is trapped in a dinghy with a hungry jaguar. Max believes his days are numbered-until he washes ashore on the coast of tiny Porto Alegre, Brazil, prepared to begin anew in the tropical clime. But when Max discovers his next-door neighbor is a Nazi hiding from persecution, he finds that for the first time in his life, he is the master of his own destiny, ready to take matters into his own hands...

Plume

Focuses on one catastrophic day in the life of businessman Rafael Mendes, weaving together stories of his ancestors and occurrences of the present as Mendes learns how the past informs and shackles the present

Harmony

From Brazil's most distinguished and important Jewish writer comes this anthology comprised of six collections: in The Carnival of the Animals, Scliar uses political allegory to convey what was normally censored during the height of repression under Brazil's military regime. These tragicomic stories reveal Scliar's interest in issues of oppression, persecution, holocaust, mutability, and the interplay between good and evil. The Ballad of the False Messiah develops the theme of postponement in the sense that for Jews redemption is always postponed in a vain wait for the Messiah. In The Tremulous Earth Scliar explores cruelty and violence in the tenuous lives of his characters, but his experience as a medical doctor informs his compassion for human frailty. Scliar expands his use of fantasy and magical realism in The Dwarf in the Television Set in topics that range from Jewish prophets to marital revenge. The Enigmatic Eye has been described as a masterpiece evoking the enigmas of art and life, and in Van Gogh's Ear, Scliar uses dark and subtle humor in a collection of biblical parables. Here witchcraft, magic, conundrums, and labyrinths are shown to be part of everyday life. A final autobiographical piece ties the collections together in which Scliar discusses his membership in Jewish, medical, gaucho, and Brazilian "tribes."These powerful stories, individually humorous, bleak, or haunting, together bring a compelling voice of the Jewish Diaspora to the wide readership it deserves.

The Collected Stories of Moacyr Scliar (Jewish Latin America Series)

University of New Mexico Press

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Books by SCLIAR, MOACYR

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SCLIAR, MOACYR. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Centaur in the Garden (THE AMERICAS)

The Centaur in the Garden

The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes

Ballad of the False Messiah

Centaur in the Garden

Gods of Raquel

Max and the Cats

Max and the Cats

The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes

The Collected Stories of Moacyr Scliar (Jewish Latin America Series)