Tanga: Originally a triangle of fabric to cover the genitals of either sex, now a bikini style.
Telenovela: Insanely poplar, insanely badly made, and insanely trashy übersoap; the mainstay of Brazilian television.
Terra firme: High forest almost never flooded.
Terreiro: “Church” or temple of candomble and urn banda-usually a converted urban or suburban house within a sacred enclosure.
Travesti: Transvestite.
Uakti: Legendary Amazonian forest monster.
Umbanda: Rio/São Paulo remix of Bahian candomble, usually practiced by whites.
Vaqueiro: Cattle rancher.
Varzea: Flood-plain zone of a river, regularly flooded.
Yemanja: Yoruban deity; “Mother whose children are like fishes,” absorbed into candomble as a sea-goddess, who is venerated in a (recent) Mass celebration on the beaches of Rio at New Year.
THANKS
Daniela Prodohl, Paulo Prodohl, and Cleusa Nascimento for help with the Portuguese and rowdy arguments over doces on fine points of idiom. Any egregious errors are entirely my own.
Zack Appleton for assistance with biofuels.
Heidi Hopeametsa and Syksy Rasanen for lunch, capoeira, and physics.
SELECTED READING
The intellectual godfather of this book is David Deursch’s The Fabric of Reality. A few years old, but one of the most intellectually thrilling books I have read.
Books in English about Brazil are surprisingly hard to find: there are ten times as many about Cuba, a country you could lose in the Itaipu Dam, as there are abour Brazil. Nevertheless, here are a few volumes I found special.
John Hemming: Red Gold. Peerless, beautiful, and grim, this is the definitive history of the Brazilian Indians.
David G. Campbelclass="underline" A Land of Ghosts. A beautifully written, humane account of the ecology and peoples of western Amazonia.
Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti: The Brazil Reader. Invaluable for the 134 types of skin color alone.
Euclides da Cunha: Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertões). Classic, stunning story of the nineteenth-century Canudos uprising and its brutal suppression.
Alex Bellos: Futebol. The Guardian’s Brazil correspondent has produced the best book about the beautiful game in Brazil and the essential guide about how to be Brazilian. I freely admit sampling his definitive account of the Fateful Final. Not a dull page in it.
Peter Robb: A Death in Brazil. Fascinating journalistic study of political corruption in the northeast, but also a history, a travel book, and a cookbook as well.
Siri: “No Tranco”
Suba: “Tantos Desejos” (Nicola Come remix)
Samba de Coco Raizes de Arcoverde: “Gode Pavao”
Acid X: “Uma Geral”
Bebel Gilberto: “Tanto Tempo”
Suba: “Na Neblina”
Fala: “Propozuda R’n’Roll”
Salome de Bahia: “Taj Mahal” (Club Mix)
Céu (feat. Pyroman): “Malemôlencia”
Milton Nascimento: “Travessia”
Carlinhos Brown/Mestre Pintodo do
Bongo: “Ai”
Bebel Gilberto: “Sem Contenção” (Truby Trio remix)
Mylene: “Nela Lagoa”
Tijuana: Pula
Carlinhos Brown: “Água Mineral”
Pagode Jazz: “Sardinha’s Club”
Suba: “Você Gosca”
Bonde Das Bad Girls: “Montagem Skollboll”
Suba: “Abraço”
Milton Nascimento: “Cio da terra”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I A NM c D O N A L D is the author of many science fiction novels, including Desolation Road; King of Morning , Queen of Day; Out on Blue Six; Chaga; Kirinya; and River of Gods. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the BSFA Award, been nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award, and has several nominations for both the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The Washington Post called him “one of the best SF novelists of our time.” He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.