excerpt
From: Clara
To: Sébastien
Subject: love is more important than climax
you made eternity ring a thousand and one times – thanks to the way you approach, Sébastien – enveloping me in your gentleness – frightening away fear – the truth is I was never afraid of sex – perhaps that’s why I never took care of myself – it was you in fact who taught me to pay attention to my body – whispering the word slowly in my ear when we had sex for the first time – slowly, when your sex touched mine – so rigid that it made me eager.
synopsis
O amante brasileiro is a novel about love. One more. Except that through it the reader will learn the difference between absolute love – which moves the sun and the stars – and illusory love. And discover also, by reading Clara and Sébastien’s e-mails, that the lovers’ nationality is not that of the country where they were born – Clara in Brazil, Sébastien in France. Their nationality is that of love, an infinite country without borders, in which they are reborn to see the world through children’s eyes.
In e-mails from readers of the column written by Clara, who is a journalist, it becomes evident that love cannot survive when one partner wants the other only for satisfying his own pleasure. The voices of Lola, Laís, Verônica, Roberta, Paulo and Lilu make audible the continual dissatisfaction of those who let themselves become the slaves of sex. As the popular song puts it, “Anyone who goes after love and peace goes wrong” (De amor e paz, Adauto Santos & Luiz Carlos Paraná), but O amante brasileiro proves the opposite. Clara’s and Sébastien’s dreams are one and the same. Each wishes to be what the other wants him to be. The freedom of one frees the other.
history
Published by Editora Girafa in 2003 and launched at Livraria Cultura on November 25, 2003. Adapted for the theater the following year, it had its premiere at Teatro Oficina on August 5, 2004. In 2006 it was transformed into the third part of Trilogia do amor, available on this site under Selected Works.
opinion
“The novel could have the subtitle ‘Verses of Love,’ such is the author’s concision and
care in altering the traditional structure of novelistic prose, approaching a language that
recalls the biblical tone of the Song of Songs.”
Deonísio da Silva
Etymology column, Caras, December 12, 2003
areas of interest
Literature, Clinical Psychology.
critical reaction
where to purchase
Livraria Cultura (portuguese – printed) | A Triologia do Amor – Livraria Cultura (portuguese – printed) | A Triologia do Amor – Livraria Cultura (portuguese – e-book)