I believe that "Barren Lives" could never be fully understood by any foreigner. I mean foreigner as someone who has not lived and grown up in Brazil. "Barren Lives" deals with the essence of human souls, when there is nothing left to believe in, nothing left to look foward to, nothing to relish, nothing to praise, when it all comes down not to being humans, as we're not, but to being animals. It sounds and looks very deep and poetic, but the strenght of this novel comes from its veracity. It is a a story that has happened to several families of people in Brasil. It doesn't make us, readers, wonder about our fragility or our values. It wants to sting us with the indignation of living our mediocre lives. It exposes human mediocrity. Far beyond social critic, it is a social attack. Ramos is dry: he saves up words, writing solely what's essential. He would condense it even more, to short sentences, litlle phrases, single words. He wouldn't even write, if he had the chance. A real genius of literature who has captured sentiments with completely detachment, subverting his own magistral reasoning. A book that MUST be read, although I couldn't trust an English version of it

The character-development of the narrator/bad guy/main character is well done. And for his excellent construction of character and command of narrative, Ramos with this novel has a permanent place in the history of Brazilian literature.

But in his later life Ramos became a communist, and you only have to scratch the surface to discover the anti-capitalist overtones in this novel. Paulo Honorario is a bad man because his sense of self-worth is driven by the accumulation of capital. He treats his relations with others as primarily economic ones. For Paulo, life is all about the accumulation of power, symbolized by the Sao Bernardo ranch which Paulo worked so hard to acquire. As a character foil, his wife is all about relating to people with love and compassion. She does not burden her relationships with economic ties. Paulo victimizes her but in this Marxist morality tale ultimately recognizes at the end of the novel that he has ruined his own life as a result of his cruel ambition. We all get the point. We have just been preached to. This book is not a "masterpiece" by my judgement, but it has enough redeeming qualities in terms of style, character development, etc not to fall into the pile of "revolutionary novels" produced in the first half of the 20th century that in retrospect are so heavy handed and obviously political (Andre Malraux comes to mind, for example).

10\10,Please read this one and don't be foolish by those stupid "capitalist" fanatics that hate Ramos just because his was a comunista,AND SO WHAT!!!?
If you read this novel,and by the end,you think that greed is good,so,please,grow up :)

PS: Really sorry about my english...My second linguage is German,so...the things get a really complicated :)