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Sign up todayThe Apprentice Tourist
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A Brazilian masterpiece, now in English for the first time: a playfully profound chronicle of an urban sophisticate’s misadventures in the Amazon
A Penguin Classic
“My life’s done a somersault,” wrote Mário de Andrade in a letter, on the verge of taking a leap. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, and almost fifty years before Bruce Chatwin ventured into one of the most remote regions of South America in In Patagonia, Andrade, the queer mixed-race “pope” of Brazilian modernism and author of the epic novel Macunaíma, finally embarks on a three-month steamboat voyage up the great river and into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world. Rife with shrewd observations and sparkling wit, The Apprentice Tourist not only offers an awed and awe-inspiring fish-out-of-water account of the Indigenous peoples and now-endangered landscapes of Brazil that he encounters (and, comically, sometimes fails to reach), but also traces his internal metamorphosis: The trip prompts him to rethink his ingrained Eurocentrism, challenges his received narratives about the Amazon, and alters the way he understands his motherland and the vast diversity of cultures found within it.
Reviews
“The Apprentice Tourist shows Andrade’s fascination with Amazonian cultures—and his utter boredom with the government officials and elites who welcomed the group of travelers along the way. . . . [It] offer[s] an important corrective in bringing canonical Brazilian works into English.” —The New York Times“A playful romp . . . The translator ha[s] done remarkable work, approaching the unruly text with joy and scholarship . . . fascination and care.” —Joy Williams, Book Post
“Farce from start to finish . . . Andrade . . . relay[s] details, with wide-eyed credulity, of his extraordinary encounters with indigenous communities, some partially real and others completely falsified, yet always well and truly beyond belief. . . . These as well as other outlandish events . . . Andrade recounts with the straightest of faces. . . . It was in the process of mythmaking that the country of Andrade’s imagination became more vivid, more alive.” —Prospect magazine Expand reviews
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