it's the story of a priest who's disapointed with the conservationism of the church and runs the country (Brazil) looking for something worth in his life. In the way, he gets involved with politicians, violent fights for land in the Northeast and expeditions into the unexplored wild rain forests, where he meets an indigenous wild tribe and get involved with the ritual Quarup.
It's a strong book, really well writen, there's a lot of adventure but it doesn't spoil the main point of it, the psichological aspect. Also, tells a lot about Brazilian culture and geography, showing a lot of its diversity.
If you are curious about Brazil, you're not allowed not to read this book, i mean it!

It's the story of a priest who's disapointed with the conservationism of the church and runs the country (Brazil) looking for something worth in his life. In the way, he gets involved with politicians, violent fights for land in the dry Northeast and expeditions into the unexplored wild rain forests, where he meets an indigenous wild tribe and gets involved with the ritual Quarup.
It's a strong book, really well writen, there's a lot of adventure but it doesn't spoil the main point of it, the psichological aspect. Also, tells a lot about Brazilian culture and geography, showing a lot of its diversity.
If you are curious about Brazil, you're not allowed not to read this book, i mean it!
It's really a pity it's out of print, but you should run and buy it where it's still possible, or borrow, read in libraries... you just gotta read it!

Sempreviva (Review by Jorge Vital de Brito Moreira, Ph.D. Lawrence University, Appleton, WI)

Who could forget the twenty-two years of martyrdom that Brazil suffered after the military coup of 1964: the prisons, the torture, the exile, and the assasination of so many innocent Brazilians? Who could forget that a Brazilian military dictatorship established the model that was used by the dictatorships of Chile, of Argentina, and of Uruguay (perhaps even more bloody and abominable) in the southern cone? And could the victims forget the impunity of the Latin American military of which the case of General Pinochet is emblematic?

Sempreviva, Antonio Callado's sixth novel (also author of Quarup, the best novel of resistance to the military coup and one of the best of Brazilian literature, published in English by Alfred Koff) offers a representation of the savage Brazilian history during the years of the military dictatorship.

Sempreviva is the story of Quinho/Vasco, an exile who secretly returns to Brazil in the period before the political opening ("Abertura"). The objective of his return is to find his wife Lucinda's torturers: the medical examiner, Ari Knut and the delegate, Claudemiro Marques. Lucinda died in the prisons of Rio de Janeira in 1964 and Quinho/Vasco is compelled to find her torturers in order to obtain the proof that he needs to denounce/report the military and the police to Amnesty International in London.

He enters Brazil clandestinely from Bolivia, and the Brazilians that he finds in Corumbá and the surrounding areas can be put into two groups: the military and police disguised as hunters of ocelots and large land-holders (and to which Quinho/Vasco is opposed), and the members of the Brazilian resistence, disguised as business people, (with whom he allies himself).

It is on this axis that Callado weaves a plot of extraordinary richness and outstanding complexity. It is a double plot (the visible and the clandestine) that is manifested in mentality, space, time, environment, as well as the situations in which he develops his characters: the Amazon rainforest, the wild animals, the carnivorous plants, the doctors and police as torturers. All of these elements emphasize, in the midst of exoticism, the suffocating atmosphere of oppression, of terror, of conspiracy, of suspense, and nightmare inherent in this story and evoke the best of gothic or police novels.

Sempreviva presents the reader with a labyrinthic story: it is the kind of writing that, on the oneiric side, has the force of an interminable delirium, and on the sensual side, puts forth the force of the bite of a puma, or of a poem by Cesar Vallejo, demanding of the reader an extraordinary effort of concentration in order to read it.

In short, Sempreviva is an important Brazilian novel by Antonio Callado, a novel that is as alive and as strong as the Brazilian flower that gives its name to the title of the novel. I urgently recommend this novel to the North American reader .