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title: The Brazilian Novel
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This post forms part of my '[aspects of the novel](/2022/01/04/aspects-of-the-novel/)' collection. Please do note that these entries, which may appear basic, are simply my own notes on the subject. They implicitly or explicitly describe a canon not of my own making or choosing and replicate this from various sources. The original encyclopaedia articles are far more comprehensive, nuanced and worth consulting. I am especially conscious in articles such as this, which work with complex and detailed racial histories, that the summary here is reductive and incomplete; but nonetheless a starting point. I am also cognizant that some of the living writers here may not even wish to be categorized under this racial rubric. However, as I am summarizing various facts from encyclopaedic sources, I present this as-is, nonetheless.

THe Brazilian novel is conventionally understood as coming into being as a category following the country's 1822 political independence from Portugal with Joaquim Manuel de Macedo's _A moreninha_ (1844, _The Little Brunette_) often considered the first. There was then a phase of Braziliam romanticism from approximately 1846-80, with standout texts including José de Alencar's _O Guarani_ (1857, _The Guarany_). In the next stage, works of Brazilian realism and naturalism handled the subject of slavery, such as Aluísio Azevedo’s _O Cortiço_ (1890, _The Slum_). These debates about race, but also the status of immigration in Brazil, were explored at the beginning of the twentieth century in novels asuch as José Pereira da Graça Aranha's _Canaã_ (1902, _Canaan_)
and Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto’s _O Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma_ (1915, _The Sad End of Polycarp Lent_).

These texts fed into the development of Brazilian modernism from around 1922-30, exemplified in works such as Mario de Andrade's _Macunaíma_ (1928). After a revolution in 1930 came a period of so-called 'social novels' such as Jorge Amado’s _Terras do sem fim_ (1942, _The Violent Land_). After this phase, there was a turn to lifewriting and experimental self-portraits, known as The New Narrative according to Passos (p. 99). A good example here is Clarice Lispector’s _A paixão segundo G.H._ (1964, _The Passion According to G.H._). Following a military coup in 1964, an emergent strain of political novel emerged, such as Antônio Callado's _Quarup_ (1967). 

Since 1985, the Brazilian novel has continued to proliferate across a range of forms with "new social movements gradually [making] their way into the national literary market" (Passos, p. 99). This includes feminist texts, LGBT authors and issues, and eco-fiction, which although featuring throughout the history of the Brazilian novel were rarely seen as independent thematic strands. Some contemporary works within this culture include Marilene Felinto’s _As mulheres de Tijucopapo_ (1981, _The Women
of Tijucopapo_), Rubem Fonseca’s _Bufo & Spallanzani_ (1985), Joao Almino’s _Samba-Enredo_ (1994, _The Samba_), and Ana Maria Gonçalves’s _Um defeito de cor_ (2006,
_A Color Blemish_)

Further reading:

* Armstrong, Piers, ‘The Brazilian Novel’, in _The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel_, ed. by Efraín Kristal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 105–24
* Passos, José Luiz, ‘Brazil’, in _The Encyclopedia of the Novel_, ed. by Peter Melville Logan, Olakunle George, Susan Hegeman, and Efraín Kristal (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 97–105