ABOUT
THE BOOK

Set in the great Amazonian port of Manaus during the first half of the twentieth century, this is the story of identical twin brothers who battle for the love of their mother. It is also a vivid and surprising portrait of a city built over the confluence of two great rivers in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. The novel itself is full of eddies, dangerous undertows and shifting surface reflections.
While recounting the fortunes and trials of a Lebanese immigrant family over many decades, The Brothers presents a Levantine Amazonia, a near-magical place at the far reaches of the Brazilian imagination. Foreigners, immigrants and the local population of Manaus share a landscape which delivers a wealth of sensations to the reader: a city full of smells, of sounds and tastes as well as a dazzling array of sights. Tense and richly atmospheric, this is an enthralling novel by one of Brazil’s finest contemporary novelists.