THE IMPOSTOR

Two novellas that challenge the chronological conventions of narrative.

This slim volume from a veteran Brazilian novelist (and film critic and diplomat) pairs two works from different eras: the 2020 title novella, translated by Hastings, followed by Blue Butterflies of the Amazon from 1996, translated by Neves. They are very different, though both feature a character who has suffered a stroke, and each concerns some interplay of chance and fate. The Impostor offers a first-person narrative by a veteran translator taking a trip to Italy with his wife. His impetus for the journey is to visit Vesuvius, where his great-granduncle fell into the volcano. Or jumped—accident or suicide? It was long ago and long forgotten, but the incident has fresh resonance for the protagonist, who had recently suffered what he insists on calling “a neurological issue. A minor one,” in which he “disappeared someplace” for 20 days. The narrative flows across time and space, from descriptions of the Italian vacation to visits with the therapist who is trying to help him account for that lost time to bonding with his 16-year-old grandson. (The two of them smoke a joint and play video games, providing additional narrative confusion.) He also conjures characters, perhaps in dreams, who seem to know him, though he doesn’t know them. Are they impostors? Or is he? By the end it appears that the trip he has been recounting is one he is still anticipating. The second, earlier novella focuses on sexual transgression across a couple of generations. An award-winning young scientist and his wife have returned to his family home to help his father after his mother suffered a stroke that has left her almost comatose. But she observes way more than she can communicate and more than her oblivious son does. Each of the four characters alternate narrating from their very different perspectives, with surprising results.

These inventive novellas are like literary puzzles for the reader to tease out.