Federico and Lourenço are brothers, but one is light-skinned and the other dark - despite their shared upbringing in Porto Alegre, their lives have followed quite different trajectories…

In theory, this was an interesting depiction of racism, colourism and the balance of power in southern Brazil, specifically Porto Alegre, and the way it manifests both societally and institutionally within universities. Through the storyline that deals with the governmental committee looking into affirmative action in university applications, we also get a glimpse of the politics surrounding Brazil’s wider racial conversation.

Unfortunately, I really struggled with the incredibly dense writing style - it was such hard work that it got in the way of the story and I never managed to get into the flow of it. It also took a while for the story’s direction to become clear - I spent the first third wondering where the story was going, then after 85ish pages, Scott meandered away from the sub-committee storyline and I found myself invested in what was going to happen.

And then Scott leaves us in the lurch at the end - I read this back in May and am still fuming over how utterly unsatisfactory the ending is. There’s leaving things open-ended and then there’s…abandoning the reader in what feels like the middle of the story. I was left with so many questions - it feels like there should be a sequel (though if there is, I likely won’t be reading it).

I greatly appreciated the Translator’s Note - Hahn discusses some of the choices he made and has some interesting points around having to consider the differing connotations of words across languages and even geographically within the same language and how that plays into translation.

A meandering story of racism and power in southern Brazil, deeply dissatisfying due to the absurdly dense writing and completely inconclusive ending.