Of Struggles and Tears: A 2018 Biography

"An indignant book, written in a time that demands indignation

With the rigor of great reporters and the vivacity of the best essayists, award-winning journalist Mário Magalhães — author of *Marighella: The Guerrilla Who Set the World on Fire *—presents in *On Struggles and Tears: A Biography of 2018 — The Year That Flirted with Apocalypse* a portrait of Brazil in 2018 , written in the heat of the moment, in the eye of the storm. The protagonists are Marielle Franco, Jair Bolsonaro, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

To this end, the author masterfully articulates events and characters such as: the irrational hunt for monkeys considered transmitters of yellow fever, the military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, the murder of Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes , Lula's arrest , the truck drivers' strike , Dr. Bumbum, the rise of censorship, the tragedy of femicide, Neymar's downfall at the World Cup, the Ursal delirium, the specter of Nazi-fascism, the fire at the National Museum , the violence in the election process, the stabbing of Bolsonaro , the illusion of the "flip-the-vote" (vote-change ), the triumph of the extreme right , the "no one lets go of anyone's hand"... And also the Bolsonaro clan and its dangerous ties, the obscurantist ideology of the new government , the preaching of the School Without a Party movement, the fight against darkness, among other events that made 2018 a year that will not end any time soon.

Of Struggles and Tears: A Biography of 2018 – The Year That Flirted with Apocalypse is, without a doubt, an essential book not only for understanding our recent past, but also our present and future. For, as Mário Magalhães states, "2018 will not end any time soon."