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Two exquisite novellas on memory, perception, and shifting intimacies
In “The Impostor,” a man travels with his wife through Italy and recalls a family legend about an uncle who was swallowed by Mt. Vesuvius. Preoccupied by this mysterious event, he grapples with the fallibility of memory and the enigma of time. In “Blue Butterflies of the Amazon,” a matriarch, rendered mute and paralyzed by a stroke, defenselessly observes the shifting dynamics between her only son, his wife, and her husband while they play out their complex intimacies before her.
As the characters of The Impostor wander between worlds and states of mind, Edgard Telles Ribeiro elucidates their situations in surprisingly inventive ways that explore devastating questions of reality, consciousness, and loss.
Praise for The Impostor
Big Other Book Award Finalist
Shelf Unbound “Reading List” selection
Literary Hub “New Books” selection
“Ribeiro’s deft and insinuating storytelling captures the uncanny feeling of slippage. . . . [His writing is] atmospheric and engrossing, and by the end Mr. Ribeiro has proven himself a master of the subtleties of subjectivity.” —Wall Street Journal
“Explor[es] the mysteries and possibilities of life continually unfolding rather than irrevocably damaged.” —North of Oxford
“Two elegant novellas, each an atmospherically charged investigation of consciousness, familial ties, legacy, and language. . . . These crystalline stories form a memorable diptych.” —Publishers Weekly
“These inventive novellas are like literary puzzles for the reader to tease out.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Telles Ribeiro’s title novella is a tour de force that takes place simultaneously in the distant past and in the present, in a seamlessly fractured continuum of time. The second novella is a complex and breathtaking work, rich in feeling, an audacious, dazzling performance. By turns delicate and humorous, wrenching and melancholic, it lays bare the souls of its characters in a manner that I can only call Chekhovian. It is the work of a master.” —Jaime Manrique, author of Cervantes Street and Like This Afternoon Forever
“Comical and brooding, enchanting and disturbing, The Impostor triggers a unique free fall into the unnerving craters of the mind.” —Laura Restrepo, author of Delirium and Song of Ancient Lovers
Select Praise for Edgard Telles Ribeiro
“Elegant, absorbingly knowing, chilling, dryly humorous and often moving.” —Francisco Goldman
“Cunning” —Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post
“[Telles Ribeiro] unveils details with a poetic lushness, unhurried, dreamy, as if lingering on their weight, their significance.” —Philadelphia Inquirer
“The art of Telles Ribeiro’s [work] is in his sumptuous lyrical narrative style.” —Tulsa World
“Telles Ribeiro’s [work] is of global import, a caution against too readily forgetting and too quickly adapting.” —Words Without Borders
Edgard Telles Ribeiro, recipient of Brazil’s most prestigious literary prizes, including the Jabuti Prize, Brazilian Academy of Letters Prize, and Brazilian PEN Club Prize, is the author of fourteen works of fiction including The Impostor and As If by Magic. He studied cinema at University of California, Los Angeles, worked as a film critic for several newspapers before becoming a career diplomat, and is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He lives in New York and Rio de Janeiro.