Like an Edenic Adam born from the clay, the narrator of Harmada rises to his feet from humble, stinking mud. By the novel's end he'll found Harmada, the capital city of a country left unnamed. How did this happen? How did he end up there? Told using Noll's characteristic fragmented logic and spirited prose, Harmada traces the life of this unnamed man on his journey from forest-dweller to well-to-do statesman, from asylum patient to Actor to Father to God, conjuring along the way essential questions about the power of art, the vanity of glory, and the meaning of life.
A mythic tale of art and displacement, Harmada serves as yet another reminder of Noll's sublime literary power. Often considered to be his masterpiece, Harmada is the winner of Jabuti Prize for Best Novel and was named one of Bravo! Magazines top 100 Brazilian novels of all time.
|Like an Edenic Adam birthed from the clay, our narrator rises to his feet from the muck—reborn, or something like that. Unbeknownst to him, he's on a desperate search for Harmada, the capital city of an unnamed nation and the land of his former glory. Told using Noll's characteristic fragmented logic and spirited prose, Harmada traces the life of this nameless man on a voyage that takes him from aimless outcast to revered director of avant-garde theater, from asylum patient to father to God, conjuring along the way essential questions about the power of art and storytelling, the vanity of glory, and the meaning of freedom.
A mythic tale of art and displacement nimbly translated from Portuguese by Edgar Garbelotto, Harmada serves as yet another reminder of João Gilberto Noll's sublime literary power: generous in its mystery; earthbound in its essential urges; and entirely unpredictable.
