A square in Antwerp

After her literary debut, *The Secret of the Oratory*, a critical and commercial success, Luize Valente returns, even more surprisingly, to the story of a migrant family in *A Square in Antwerp*. With masterful narrative that weaves back and forth between New Year's Eve 2000 in Copacabana and the years surrounding the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Luize reconstructs the misfortune inflicted by Nazism on the Jews, the reason many of them would come to Brazil. Combining sensitivity to human drama and extensive historical research, Luize portrays the scourge of Nazism in the minutiae of everyday life, in the intimacy of German and European families, with barbaric developments in Portugal, in the home of Clarice and Olivia, from where the narrative sets out to conquer the world and Brazil. We follow the flight of Clarice and her husband, the Jewish pianist Theodor, across much of Europe, always one step ahead of Nazi persecution, an escape that leads part of the family to cross the ocean. As if this breathtaking narrative weren't enough, Luize presents the reader with a thrilling and totally unexpected ending.