Ciccio comes of age in Sao Paolo in the 1960s, stealing cars with his friend Ariosto and cheerfully stalking his older brother Mimmo's parade of girlfriends. One day, while leafing through one of his father's books - he has thousands, and they are shelved 2, 3 and 4-deep throughout the house - he comes across a letter pointing to the existence of a half-brother, born in Germany in the early thirties.
I don't know how to say what I mean, exactly, but this novel has that lovely quality of a lot of South American novels I've read: dreamy and smooth, as if the events slide through time kept on a new, strange clock. It's also very funny, earthy, and poignant. Based on events from the author's life, and including copies of real letters involved in the search for Chico Buarque's own German brother.
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