Via pia: A Novel [Paperback]

From one of Brazils most acclaimed new literary stars, a twenty-first-century epic set in Rios largest favela.

Life on themorro, the hill, is good. Five young peoplethe brothers Washington and Wesley and their friends Douglas, Murilo, and Biellive close to Rocinhas main avenue, Via ?pia, just a quick bus ride from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

But the rhythms of their lives stutter and scratch when Brazils militarized police storm Rocinha as part of pacification efforts ahead of the upcoming World Cup and an influx of international tourists.Via ?piacharts the expectant anxiousness before the polices invasion, the chaos born from their occupation of the hill, and the aftermath of their silent withdrawal from the favela after one year.

Told in heated bursts and marked by the charged chronology of the protagonists lives, Geovani Martinss prodigious debut novel knits together the dramas and dreams of the favela during a peak of turbulent unrest. Like theboom boom katof Brazilian funk, the unbridled ambitions and resolute friendships of these characters blare throughoutVia ?pia, delivering a resonant counternarrative to the notion that violent interventions are the states only remedy to the afflictions of crime and poverty. The favela retorts: life, life is the answer.

Geovani Martinswas born in 1991 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is the author ofThe Sun on My Head,named one of the Best Brazilian Books of the Century byFolha de S?o Paulo. He grew up with his mother in the Rio neighborhood of Vidigal. He supported his writing by working as a sandwich- board man and selling drinks on the beach, and was discovered during creative writing workshops at FLUP, the literary festival of the Rio favelas.Via ?piais his first novel.

Julia Sanchestranslates works from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. Her translations includeSlash and Burnby Claudia Hern?ndez,lS