The Athenaeum (Pocket Edition)

Paperback edition of the only novel considered impressionist in Brazilian literature.

In The Ateneu , the character Sérgio, now an adult, recalls his time as a boarding student at Ateneu College. Blending joys and sorrows, disappointments and excitements, the narrator patiently reconstructs, through memory, the adolescence he experienced and lost within the walls of the famous boarding school. This book is a rite of passage, a diary of the boy in the closed environment of the school: the classes, the study hall, the unusual fun of swimming in the pool, the readings, recess, what happened in the dormitories, in the cafeteria, the disputes.

First published in 1888 in Gazeta de Notícias, O Ateneu is one of the most powerful novels in Brazilian literature and escapes any rigid classification of literary periodization. Raul Pompeia's style blends elements of Realism, Naturalism, Impressionism, and also traces of Parnassianism and Expressionism. The richness of this style results in one of the most important works of 19th-century Brazilian literature, ever-present and singular in its fascination.