The last brandy

In this new edition of The Last Conchaque , award-winning author Carlos Herculano Lopes invites us to accompany Fernando on a journey back in time, where surprising revelations about himself and his family await him.

After his mother's death, Fernando finds himself forced to return to his hometown, the fictional city of Santa Marta, in Minas Gerais. There, feeling lost in a place that should be his home and completely alone, he is tormented by memories of his childhood. Amidst the rural and supposedly peaceful landscape, he gradually reveals secrets about his family and his childhood. Forced to revisit everything he most wishes he could forget, he discovers that, even after years, trauma is never overcome when one lacks a clear understanding of what one experienced, especially when that trauma involves the death of one's own father.

In this moving and profound novel, Carlos Herculano Lopes, author of the award-winning "A Dança dos Cabelos" (The Dance of the Hair), among others, once again achieves a very high level of formal elaboration and psychological depth. His literature shows us that every individual experience is, at the same time, universal. It's impossible to read "The Last Cognac" and not notice that the search for identity, the rediscovery of one's roots, and the fear of being alone are experiences and feelings that are part of all of us and all societies, whether urban or rural.

Originally published in 1995, the book has undergone several reprints over the years. As Wander Melo Miranda, professor emeritus at UFMG and a leading scholar of Brazilian literature, states in the afterword accompanying this edition: from its debut, Carlos Herculano Lopes's singularity "immediately asserted itself, presenting a new way of addressing local themes without being bound by limiting regionalisms or the repetitive urban themes prevalent in recent decades in Brazilian literature (...). His literary persuasiveness lies entirely in the creation of this other world, which momentarily departs from our reality to better represent it—our happiness and our damnation. What more is needed to justify the relevance of this small, great book?"