Where tigers feel at home

The novel, with its humorous dialogue and risqué passages, is set in the city of Alcântara, Maranhão. The plot revolves around Eléazard von Wogau, a French journalist preparing to publish a biography of Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit who lived in 17th-century Brazil. Without slipping into clichés about the country, Blas de Roblès presents an engaging and dizzying narrative that reveals the author's intimacy with Brazilian culture. "Having lived in the Northeast, Roblès approaches Brazilian reality with ease, avoiding easy and dangerous clichés, while at the same time maintaining his foreign accent, essential for understanding another's culture and writing a novel as fabulous, entertaining, and audacious as this one. A novel that blends life and erudition, expectation and mystery in an engaging and fascinating mosaic," says writer Tatiana Salem Levy, responsible for the book's blurb. Other complex and intriguing characters enrich the narrative woven by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès. Eléazard has just separated from Elaine and falls in love with Loredana, an Italian woman harboring a painful secret. Elaine, meanwhile, undertakes an unlikely mission in Mato Grosso in search of extremely rare fossils, while Moema, the couple's daughter, goes through the arduous drug world in Fortaleza. There's also Moreira, the corrupt and manipulative governor of Maranhão, and Nelson, a boy from the Pirambú favela driven by a desire for revenge.