Blood-drenched Beard

The young man's father, dying, at last tells him the truth about his grandfather or at least the truth as he knows it. The mean old gaucho was murdered by some fellow villagers in Garopaba, a town on the Atlantic now famous for its surfing and fishing. It was during a Sunday dance at a community hall. The lights went out suddenly and when they came up, his grandfather was lying on the ground in a pool of bloodor so the story goes. It is as if his father has given him a deathbed challenge. And his girlfriend has just left him, so he has no strong ties. He is a great ocean swimmer, so why not strike out for Garopaba, and see what he can discover? The young man travels up the coast, finds an apartment by the water, and begins to build a simple new life, taking his father's old dog as a companion. He swims in the sea every day, makes a few friends, falls into a relationship, begins to make enquiries.But information doesn't come easily. A rare neurological condition means that the young man doesn't recognize the faces of people he's met leading frequently to awkwardness and occasionally to violence. And the people who do know about his grandfather are fearful to give anything away. Life becomes complicated for him in Garopaba, and even dangerous.Steeped in tension, atmosphere and the sultry allure of south Brazil, Daniel Galera's masterfully spare and powerful prose unfolds a story of discovery that feels mythic, elemental and archetypal a wise and potent display of storytelling sorcery that announces one of Brazil's very greatest young writers as a blazing new literary talent to the English-speaking world.