Overview

At nearly 100 years old, Natalia has lived a full life. A life defined by people: Vicente, her husband and fellow teacher; her best friend Sarah, the cookie seller; Jorge who offered tarot readings for humans and birds alike; and her friends who gathered each Sunday to eat bean stew and plot ways to resist Brazil's dictatorship any way they could. But slowly, one after another, the people that made up this old woman's life have disappeared, leaving her alone. Well, not entirely alone-she's pretty sure a spy is tracing her every move, and her loved ones haven't left her, not really. Now, with an unnamed external threat taking over the world, Natalia watches the days pass from inside her Rio de Janeiro apartment, awaiting the daily call from her adult daughter living somewhere faraway 'on the upper ocean.' In Juliana Leite's English-language debut, acutely translated by Zoe Perry, nothing is ever what it seems: neighbours are informants; ginger cookies exact revenge; and in a friend's dark basement, Vicente has visions of an early human ancestor being devoured by a lion. Walking the tenuous line between fact and fable, humour and horror, EXEMPLARY HUMANS is an ambitious novel about memory and the human condition-past, present, and future.

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9781949641967

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Reviews

""Masterful, crystalline prose... Leite's novel is one to read and reread and grow old with."" --Bruna Dontas Lobato, author of Blue Light Hours ""Juliana Leite writes about death and old age with the exuberance of a child who's new to life."" --José Eduardo Agualusa, author of The Living and the Rest

""Masterful, crystalline prose... Leite's novel is one to read and reread and grow old with."" --Bruna Dantas Lobato, author of Blue Light Hours ""Juliana Leite writes about death and old age with the exuberance of a child who's new to life.""--José Eduardo Agualusa, author of The Living and the Rest ""Between the intimate and the social, full of the vastness of everyday life. As delicate as it is poignant, as poetic as it's concrete, Exemplary Humans is a rare literary feat.""--Stênio Gardel, author of The Words That Remain by

Author Information

Juliana Leite is a Brazilian writer based in São Paulo. Her work has been published in Italy, France, Portugal, the UK, and the US, appearing in The Paris Review, the French newspaper Libération, and many Brazilian magazines. She's been awarded the O. Henry Prize for the story ""My Good Friend"" and is the first Brazilian writer to ever achieve the distinction; the story was optioned for film. Her previous works have been shortlisted for and awarded many prizes in Brazil, including the Critics' Choice for best novel with her debut book, also optioned for film. Juliana has been a fellow at Art Omi, Ucross Foundation, and Hawthornden Foundation. Zoë Perry has translated the work of several contemporary Brazilian authors, including Juliana Leite, Veronica Stigger, Clara Drummond, Carol Bensimon and Ana Paula Maia. Her translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, the New York Times, and The Paris Review. Born and raised in southeastern Kentucky, she is currently based in Miami.

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