Description
The English-language debut of a master stylist: a compassionate but relentless novel about the long, dark harvest of Brazil’s totalitarian rule
Reviews
"I Didn’t Talk is a cheeky and patient book, gently confronting pain without sacrificing wit, a book which merges together a fraught past and an uncertain future." — Commonplace Review
"Beatriz Bracher: intense and precise." — Folha de S.Paulo
"Crisp, dizzying." — Jornal do Brasil
"Pensive novel of political terror and its consequences, set in the shadow of post-junta Brazil....A slender but memorable contribution to the literature of crime and (sometimes self-inflicted) punishment." — Kirkus
"Published in Brazil on the 40th anniversary of the Golpe de 64, I Didn’t Talk can be read as one of many novelistic catalogs of 20th-century atrocities. As with the works of W. G. Sebald and Patrick Modiano, this is a slim, dense novel that lingers in the eddies of personal memory and historical reckoning." — Los Angeles Review of Books
"Above all, it's the writing that shines in I Didn't Talk. Bracher, along with translator Morris, handles immensely difficult subjects beautifully, with language that's sometimes spare, sometimes elaborate, but always gorgeous. It's a novel that's intelligent but not showy, and Bracher's restraint makes the story all the more potent. And the story is an important one. I Didn't Talk isn't just about one emotionally bruised man; it's about the lasting effects of violence, and the way cruelty causes its victims to torture themselves." — NPR
"Extraordinary force and beauty—also a reflection on the construction of memory and the power of the tale." — O Estado de S. Paulo
"Brazil’s Bracher arrives in English with this brilliant, enigmatic rumination...Bracher is a force to be reckoned with and has crafted a haunting, powerful novel." — Publishers Weekly (starred)
""Brazil’s “ghosts” refuse to stay buried, and they haunt the narrator of Bracher’s novel."" — Lisa Mullenneaux, The Critical Flame
"Bracher’s novel examines the way in which stories give shape and meaning to the unknowable, and resists the notion that one definitive version of history can or should impose meaning on the past." — Tristen Harwood, The Monthly
"Bracher’s story abounds with narrative and thematic contradictions and encompasses everything from the gulf between our own self-image and how others perceive us to the flaws that can arise when one attempts to apply literary analysis to a life. The resulting narrative is unpredictable and its dissonances resonate powerfully." — Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
"While the central question—did Gustavo give away his brother-in-law?—serves as a locus for the book, it is really an extended meditation on a variety of topics: the (un)reliability of memory, the meaning of education, the way members of families see one another, and the crushing impact of the dictatorship years on generations past and present. Translator Adam Morris deftly renders Bracher’s conversational style, chasing Gustavo as he skips from one topic to another, lost in the haze of memory." — World Literature Today
