Gambling

A game of chance is one in which loss or gain depends solely on luck, not on the player's combinations, calculation, or skill. With this theme, "Jogos de Azar" (Games of Chance), José Cardoso Pires's first new book in Brazil, arrives in bookstores, after the re-release of three works and a long wait. In "Jogos de Azar," the author is not only interested in denouncing social injustice, but also in his evident commitment to reality, rendered in predominantly denotative language. José Castello, in the preface, states: "He saw a generality: he erased it. He encountered a commonplace: he threw it away. He encountered common sense: he crushed it. Torn between Barnard and Caravaggio—in the gap between the two—he became an expert hunter of the banal. He left us the remains of his battles, this splendid literature."