If I close my eyes now

With refined language, journalist and writer Edney Silvestre crudely exposes human evil, and is capable of immensely sensitive psychological insights, contextualizing his characters socially and historically. With the experienced eye and sensitivity of someone who has covered some of the most significant events in recent world history – from the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers in New York to Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba, including a series of reports on Iraq before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – the author combines lyricism and historical record in If I Close My Eyes Now, narrating the investigation of a brutal crime during one of the most important periods in Brazilian history. In April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the first man to travel into space, left Earth's orbit, opening up a universe of possibilities for humanity and a technological victory in a century that seemed to be heading toward an era of relative peace, progress, and social justice. That same day, in a small town in the former coffee district of Rio de Janeiro, two 12-year-old boys—from the lower middle class, one the son of a railway worker, the other a butcher—find the mutilated body of a beautiful woman on the shore of a lake where they are going to play hooky. Frightened, the boys immediately call the police and undergo a harsh interrogation, during which they are treated more as suspects than witnesses. The brutality of the murder and the utter disregard for humankind shock the boys, who refuse to accept the official explanation, which claims the culprit is the husband, the town's frail dentist, driven by jealousy. They begin an investigation, aided by a man living in the town's nursing home, a former political prisoner of the Vargas dictatorship, who conceals the motivation for his interest in the matter. From him, the boys hear a warning that marks the beginning of a whirlwind of surprising events: "Nothing in this country is what it seems." Soon, they realize that the woman has a strange connection with the city's most important men and that her past is clouded with lies. The investigation will also uncover a perverse landscape in which sexual violence, racism, corruption, and spurious political alliances—those trying to maintain power at any cost—intertwine, at a time when Brazil is moving toward industrialization. For the boys, it will be a terrifying journey of maturation and adulthood, still in their early teens. In his literary debut, Edney Silvestre constructs an electrifying and moving plot, full of references to one of the most important moments in the political and cultural scene of Brazil and the world. Transiting through genres as distinct as the detective novel, the historical novel and the coming-of-age novel, If I Close My Eyes Now, which took six years to complete, is a dizzying read that portrays the essence of our society.