Galileia

The book is advertised as a novel about a landscape – the arid Sertão in north-eastern Brazil and its tough inhabitants. For it is more a book about lies and self-deception. Three cousins drive back to the house of the patriarch – their grandfather, who is now agonizing. All of the three left this dry land in order to escape their apparent fate to become farmers in this forgotten land. On their way back and later at the grandfather’s estate one of the cousins – a doctor from Recife – tells us the story as it advances and in extensive flash-backs. The reader is anxiously waiting for the grand revelation of some kind of dark family secret. When it happens, you do not know if it is just another lie. Nothing seems to what is appears to be. It is like the shimmering desert.
During the journey you get to know some unique characters, lots of uncles, a murdered aunt, bastards of the family. Some o them expelled – one adopted turning into the stepbrother of his own father.