RaveAsymptoteAs a literary project, a historical record, and a translation, Minor Detail is, simply put, brilliant ... the narrative proceeds with the technical, methodical precision of a military operation ... The prose is sparse and cutting, bare enough to progress without passing judgment ... s a book that says precisely what it needs to say—nothing less, nothing more. And I mean this as the greatest complement, the highest form of praise. Shibli writes to both give voice and honor silence; Jaquette does the same, rendering her prose with a sharpness that pulls us along, on edge. There is pain, here. But there is history, too. The smell of gasoline. The sound of a dog howling. A simple stick of chewing gum, reminding us of how the world gives and takes, and how we, as humans, are complicit in the act.
Geovani Martins, Trans. by Julia Sanches
PositiveAsymptoteMartins shows us that the language of the favelas is just as legitimate as the language of the academy, keeping \'literature\' true to everyday form. Julia Sanches preserves this legitimacy in English, delivering a carefully crafted translation filled with colloquialisms, slang, and Portuguese. The result is...a wild ride that exposes us to the complexities of life in the periphery and the complexities of translating that life from one language into another ... Each recollection is more of a vignette than a full-fledged story, where image (rather than plot) holds the metaphor. Though these images are strikingly clear, they (intentionally) leave us with minimal resolution—with an uncertainty as to how these characters endure, or overcome, the situations that they do. The favela, the morro, the barraco: these are complex, distinctly Brazilian, places. Readers who are familiar with them will have an easier time navigating Martins’s text, while those who aren’t might find themselves a bit lost ... This is a book that lives on the streets, among the people of Rio’s favelas. And life there doesn’t slow down just because we might be unfamiliar with it.
