Heliopolis
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
As a child Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he was born and transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty-seven, he works high above the above the sprawling metropolis of São Paulo for a vacuous 'communications company'. But this is not his world, and this is not a simple rags-to-riches story: Ludo's destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him both extremities of opulent excess and abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness and brutality.
By the author of The Amnesia Clinic and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Today's S o Paulo, where great wealth and grinding poverty exist side by side, is a star player in Scudamore's absorbing second novel (after The Amnesia Clinic). Born in the slums of S o Paulo, Ludo dos Santos lucked out when, as a child, the extravagantly wealthy Z Fischer Carnicelli took in Ludo and his mother, giving her a job as domestic help and him a safe place to live. Now grown, Ludo is having trouble finding his way: the company he works for profits by exploiting those unlucky enough to live in the slums; his boss is perpetually disappointed in him (late night partying has Ludo snoozing on the bathroom floor at work); and he's having sex with Melissa, a married woman who happens to be his adoptive sister. But what begins as an innocuous run-in with a street kid launches Ludo on an existential quest that could have mortal implications. Issues of race and class spark a wily, layered, and savvy narrative ("money makes you whiter," Ludo says) where nods to Great Expectations coexist nicely with Scudamore's morbid humor and blistering social commentary.
