2006 books

[peteryoung]

54) Chico Buarque, Budapest, 2003
José Costa is an unexpectedly successful ghostwriter with an increasingly less successful personal life, and after a stopover in Budapest he becomes curious about Magyar, the notoriously difficult Hungarian language. Flitting back and forth between Rio de Janeiro and Budapest, Costa sees his life fade out while the life of his alter-ego Zsoze Kósta, Hungarian ghostwriter, becomes ever more real... A dream-like novel about transition between personal realities, thoroughly marinated in a particularly Brazilian kind of dazzling, literary creativity.
[ LJ BOOK BADGE ]

Comments

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I love Buarque's music but still haven't read any of his novels. "Estorvo" (i don't know how it's called in English) is supposedly very good (it was even made into a film).

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

That would be his first novel, Turbulence (the film's website is here (http://www.estorvo.com.br)). I picked up his second novel Benjamin in a second hand shop a few days ago. On the strength of Budapest it's already close to the top of the reading pile.