The charge

Award-winning author Mário Rodrigues transports the reader to two extremely important periods in Brazilian history: the Collor era and the 2018 World Cup final in Russia.

The protagonist, born in 1988—the same year as our last Constitution—is a renowned soccer player about to take Brazil's fifth penalty against Germany, which had already converted its five. If he scores, he fulfills his role, and Brazil can become six-time champions, definitively closing the wound left open by the shameful 7-1 defeat. But if he misses, we return to the banal status of runner-up. This moment, frozen in time, is also a chance to take revenge not on Germany, but on Brazil itself, which has denied, confiscated, and stolen so much from its people.

A writer with a profound command of his field, Mário Rodrigues constructs the narrative by alternating between the journey the protagonist has taken throughout his life, the moment he finds himself facing the goal, and the history of Brazil, using a writing technique that allows him to dribble past the defense of oblivion, advancing between the general and the particular, until he leaves the reader face to face with himself.