The Tokyo Suite
ABOUT
THE BOOK
A good nanny is hard to find. Fernanda, a busy executive whose marriage is foundering, has a room in her house redecorated in the style of a tiny luxury hotel room to entice her maid to stay. Still, one morning, Maju walks out the door, gets into a taxi, and vanishes with Fernanda’s daughter Cora. The disappearance puts the past and the present on a collision course, and ignites desires, resentments, and class tensions. The desperate quest that ensues is a settling of scores with life and the expectations we create for ourselves.
Original title in Brazilian Portuguese Suite Tóquio, published by Editora Todavia (2020)
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Bruna
Dantas Lobato
Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and award-winning translator. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is published by Grove Atlantic in the US, and by Companhia das Letras/PRH in Brazil (in her own translation into Portuguese).
Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and award-winning translator. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is published by Grove Atlantic in the US, and by Companhia das Letras/PRH in Brazil (in her own translation into Portuguese).
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
We would like to nominate this title for the Dublin Literary Award for the following reasons:
The book is available in our collection (General Collection and Circulation Section), alongside other novels by the same author — “A teta racional” and “Tudo pode ser roubado” — all of which show a strong record of loans and reader interest.
Giovana Madalosso is a well-established Brazilian author with a solid literary trajectory and a strong connection with our library. She took part in the panel “A palavra é o sol” (“The Word is the Sun”) during this year’s Virada Literária, a major literary event hosted by our institution.
She has also been announced as one of the invited authors for FLIP 2025 (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty), one of Brazil’s most prominent literary festivals. (Biblioteca Mario de Andrade)
Madalosso’s narrative delves deep into the human psyche, examining themes of maternal guilt, societal expectations, and the search for personal identity. Rich and multi-layered, Madalosso narrative explores the essence of modern urban life and the complicated relations developed between mother, daughter and her caretaker. How sensible and it is to be sacrifing your life to take care of others. The narrative delves deep into humans psyque. The story makes you love and hate the mains character throughout the book. It is breath taking. (Biblioteca Demonstrativa Maria da Conceição Moreira Salles)