Bernardo Kucinski

I enjoy and admire stories told through different characters and points of view; think Game of Thrones, 2666 by Bolaño, My Name is Red by Pamuk and Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. K uses the same multi-narrated structure but rather than characters the stories are about people living under the repressive military dictatorship of Brazil amidst the Cold War. The central story (fictional but based on a true story and as Kucinski explains: everything happened) is about ‘K’ a Polish Jew, a refugee who has escaped his country many years before and now resides in Brazil. At a time when many dissidents and suspected communists (apparently such South American dictatorial regimes were US funded so as to keep Communist influence out of the Americas) to the new dictatorship ‘disappear’ his daughter suddenly goes missing. Thus begins K’s struggle to find her. Through his desperate search and a series of fragmentary stories of citizens embroiled in a repressive hell, we are transported to a horrendous and terrifying period of history, to a country shrouded in fear and suspicion; we feel it all. All the worry, all the fear, the suspicion, the hope, the hopelessness, the loneliness, the exasperation, the desperation, the anger, the guilt and the sorrow.

It is an absolutely astounding work - incredibly powerful and well put together; these fragmentary stories Kucinski assembles are so well blended that they embody the whole life of a nation and time in a way that means you cannot help but understand the hardships faced. Books like this are important and as I understand it, this is one of the best on ‘the disappeared’. I can’t recommend this enough; as awareness to such government but also in order to read a book that holds so much of life and humanity (the good and the bad) so cleverly and so skilfully. Like it says on the cover, ‘it is both a riveting novel and an important historical document’ a great accomplishment.… (mer)

Brazil: State and Struggle unmasks the apparent relaxation of political control by the military. The book's central theme is the history and development of the Brazilian labour movement and the attempts of the State to control and repress it. The struggle of the book's title refers principally to the struggle of the trade unions against the State since the labour legislation of the Vargas government in 1937 established State control of the unions up to the abertura of General Figueiredo who promised to bring democracy back to Brazil, even if he had to do it 'by force'.… (mer)