Escrito em 1980, mas retrato do país atual. Distopia brasileira onde meio ambiente, população marginalizada, estruturas políticas e sociais em decadência foi imaginado como a intensificação da ditadura brasileira. Mas é bem assustadoramente real em 2019. Está tudo ali, envolvimento de políticos com milícias, mentiras como forma de governo (antecipando nosso atual governo de fake news), desdém com ciências, artes, educação, e até um sobrinho meio estranho do protagonista (lembra Carluxo sem problemas cognitivos). Leitura essencial para entender como a historia se repete em ciclos, quando o peso da repressão não foi devidamente esclarecido e exposto pelas gerações que viveram esta situação. ( )

Não Verás País Nenhum é um romance brasileiro de Ignácio de Loyola Brandão publicado originalmente em 1981. Não verás país nenhum começou como um conto, O homem do furo na mão, e se transformou em um romance. Esta obra venceu o Prêmio Illa de melhor livro latino-americano publicado na Itália em

"We may not be extinct yet but we're pressing the outer limits."

This is a near-future dystopian novel set in a Brazil in which the rain forest has been totally cut down, and what remains is a desert larger than the Sahara. In the city, water is rationed, and there are "heat pockets" in which anyone who accidently wanders is instantaneously blistered and dies. There are so many people that everyone has a circulation pass that limits where they can go, down to the sidewalk on which side of the street. We experience the horrors of this life through Souza, a former professor, now disgraced for asking too many questions. His life becomes more and more desparate, and his experiences more and more surreal and hallucinatory.

This was a fairly early "climate apocalypse" book, and to that extent it is frighteningly real, but also frighteningly prescient. Refugees surround the city in pauper encampments. Many people show defects and mutations caused by the rampant pollution and ongoing ecological disasters that have become commonplace.

At times the book was almost like a catalogue of everything that could go wrong and how incompetent and even wrong-minded governments, controlled by oligarchs and multinationals, can be in dealing with these crises. To that extent, the book occasionally dragged for me. But there is a definite warning here. I was struck by this:

"Scientists. A minimal, marginalized lot these days....As soon as the System realized that the prognosis was bad, and would make them perhaps look bad in turn, voila: they start an intense propaganda campaign in the press, fostering as much sarcasm as possible, with respect to anything scientific."

3 1/2 stars ( )

This is my second novel by Brandão, after "Zero", and although stylistically different (more conventional), it is just as convincing in its dystopic vision. Like "Zero", "And Still the Earth" is inspired by the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1980's, but rather than a sideways-skewed surreal version, this is a projection into a near-future Brazil run by an insuperable military bureaucracy (in some ways like Terry Gilliam's "Brazil"). Ecocide is rampant as large swathes of the country have been sold off to foreign states and corporations, forcing the local population into ever-shrinking zones of confinement. The climate has been wrecked beyond repair and the country is dying of thirst (uncanny echoes of the situation in 2014 and 2015). It's a long novel and I suppose quite a bleak one, but there is lots of humour, only some of it black, and frequent shafts of sunlight pierce the gloom in the form of everyday incidents and moments of humanity. It's also a sad story of a decayed relationship - the early days of the 50-something hero's marriage are beautifully related, as is its gradual, ungraspable decline in tandem with the country. ( )

Of all the books I've read (and like you, I've read a heap) this one has always stuck in my brain. It's an end of the world type story, but it's just so unusual and weird. Maybe I'm weird, but I loved it twenty years ago when I first read it and I still enjoy reading it once in a while. If you decide to read it you won't be let down in one respect - that I promise - it is strange. It's on my list of favorites.

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