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BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB | ALBERTO MUSSA | THE MYSTERY OF RIO |

19th September 2019, 18.30-21.00

2019 – The year of adding marvellous Brazilian novels to your reading lists!

ALBERTO MUSSA (1961-)

O Senhor do Lado Esquerdo (2011)

translated as

The mystery of Rio (2013)

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A prize-winning inventive and cerebral detective novel

set in the mythical past of the city of Rio de Janeiro oozing with seemingly real-life stories with unbridled fantasy.

Starting with the murder of the presidential secretary at the home of the notorious Marchioness of Santos

located in the fashionable imperial borough of São Cristóvão on the Friday 13th June 1913.

Action develops in iconic sites of Rio de Janeiro – the Marchioness of Santos palace, the 1809

British Cemetery, the Atlantic Forest, in the Yoruba imagination of the Rio dwellers and across rival police districts and federal capital boroughs

in the Vertiginous Life of Rio de Janeiro.

Multi-layered mythical historical, ethnological, and psycho-geographical narrative dealing with adult content aimed at provoking your thoughts and emotions.

Who is the real Dr. Myroslav Zmuda and his Nurses? Where does he conceal his top secrets?

But is it the famous treasure hidden somewhere in the ravaged Morro do Castelo?

You deserve a prize if you succeed in solving the riddles in this singular crime fiction before

you finish reading it! Notice that there is a nod to ‘C’est moi, Hercule Poirot’!

This is the second of the five detective novel series Compêndio Mítico do Rio de Janeiro – The Mythical Conpendium of Rio de Janeiro

by Alberto Mussa.

Unmissable! Alberto Mussa will honour our Brazilian Bilingual Book Club with his thoughts! Find out how!

Details of available publications: ENGLISH 2013 - The mystery of Rio * translated by Alex Ladd published by Europa Editions ISBN-10: 1609451368 ISBN-13: 978-1609451363 * Or rather - The Master of the Left Side PORTUGUESE 2011 - O Senhor do Lado Esquerdo published by Record ISBN-10: 850109322X ISBN-13: 978-8501093226 ASIN: B00A3CSG1U

SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATIONS

O Senhor do Lado Esquerdo was published in 2011. The original title in Portuguese could be best rendered in English as The Master of the Left Side. Europa Editions published the translation as The mystery of Rio in 2013.

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O Senhor do Lado Esquerdo overlays a psychogeography of Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the twentieth century with the various facts from the actual history of the capital city of Brazil at the time. It has the punctilious detail of great city biographies. One cannot but be reminded of the works by Perter Ackroyd (1945-) about London. It features some of the most iconic historical sites of Rio de Janeiro when it was the capital of Brazil, a celebrated treasure hunt and plenty of mythmaking including the experimental psychology of a fictional researcher.

It has interwoven plots which develop at great speed. The novel is not divided into

chapters. It contains a substantial glossary linked to the Yoruba traditions brought to Brazil. It reproduces a floor plan of the fictional residence Casa das Trocas (House of Swaps), a two-page introduction and acknowledgements at the end. In the introduction, the narrator (or is it the author?) tells the reader near the close that this is ‘a real story, and an autobiography, although it may seem fiction’. Can we believe him?

However, the narrator whimsically tells the reader about the criteria he applied to write

about the perfect crime in this novel. He takes a jocose swipe at a fictional ‘Unesco Standing Committee on the Theory and Art of the Detective Novel’ headquartered in London and funded by the Scotland Yard, dismissing its rules as ill-suited. It is a highly original way of introducing the narrative. The apparent fuzziness of the opening gambit hints at the twists and turns in this tale, a notably Machadian approach engaging the mind of the reader.

Crime fiction has a very long history. Solving crimes seems to have fascinated humanity for millennia. Finding a fictional solution to crime puzzle or riddle appears in early literature. From the late eighth or early seventh century BC, there is a reference to a murder of father by his son, followed by incest in Homer’s epic poems Odyssey and Ilyad. The former makes a single reference to the mythical Greek king Oedipus (Book 11) and the latter (Book 23) confirms that Oedipus continued to rule. The myth appears metamorphosed some two centuries later Oedipus Tyrannus/ Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BC) by Sophocles (c. 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC).

Early whodunnit narratives feature in The Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights ) which brings us The Three Apples, narrated by fabled Scheherazade, a story about a fisherman who discovers a heavy locked chest with gruesome contents (a cut-up woman’s body),

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along with the earliest fictional detectives featuring in The Merchant and the Thief and Ali Khwaja.

Incidentally, it is worth reminding ourselves that the treasury of fabulous oral literary storytelling traditions of the ancient and medieval Orient (Arabian, Persian and more) became known among Brazilian readers thanks to MALBA TAHAN in 20th century. Malba Tahan is the pen name of Júlio César de Mello e Souza (1895 -1974). He was a math teacher extraordinaire and no lesser fiction author, who published translations of numerous oriental tales from 1927 onwards. He also created one of the most extraordinary literary histories of Mathematics in his ingenious 1938 O Homem que calculava: aventuras de um singular calculista persa. (The Man who Counted (or rather ‘Calculated’ N.K.). Our book club members rated it as one of the best novels ever written and recommended that all schools in Britain read it.

https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-38-tahan.pdf

Crime fiction has entertained humanity from time immemorial. Detective stories, murder mysteries, mystery novels, police novel and noir fiction with elements of horror fiction have gained huge popularity since the 19th century. Often, such fiction became popular fiction. In the land of Sherlock Holmes and Poirot, there is no need to elaborate on it. Not only were such novel translated into many languages but also adapted for cinema, TV and the 21st century digital

versions.

In Brazil, crime fiction began to appear mostly in short stories in the nineteenth century. The world master storyteller Machado de Assis published a crime short story O enfermeiro (1884), later reprinted in Várias Histórias (1896). Olavo Bilac (1865-1918), a leading poet, also wrote chronicles and novelettes - O crime appears in his Chronicas e novellas: 1893-1894.

Rio de Janeiro, as the capital of Brazil, features in the oeuvre of Machado de Assis as

London in Charles Dickens. There is notable psychogeography of the city in the works of João do Rio (1881-1921). For example, one of his short stories A aventura de Rozendo Moura, which appeared in collection A mulher e os espelhos (1919) depicts urban life and crime. His Religions in Rio (1904) contains a very original view of life in Rio de Janeiro and its vast spiritual diversity. The first chapter – No Mundo dos Feitiços (In the world Sorcerers) introduces the Orishas and Yoruba traditions in Brazil. Chapter six O Satanismo (Satanism) tells us about practices and links to crime. Our book club discussed Religions in Rio in 2016. https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-05-joaodorio.pdf

Enthusiasm for crime fiction effervesced in the first decades of the twentieth century in Brazil. A curious joint enterprise resulted in a series of crime novels published under the name O Mystério by Medeiros e Albuquerque (1867-1934), Afrânio Peixoto (1876-1947), Coelho Neto (1864-1934) and Viriato Correia (1884-1967) in feuilleton format in A Folha from 20th March to 20th May 1920. On the other hand, the investigation of a crime also features in various guises in numerous novels. For instance, this is the case of The Apple in the Dark (1964) by Clarice Lispector (1920-1977).

Alberto Mussa’s novel brings various historic sites of Rio de Janeiro into focus. The main setting is Casa das Trocas – in real life the Casa da Marquesa de Santos, a 19th century architectural gem in the borough of São Cristóvão, a gift from Empreror Dom Pedro I to his mistress Domitila de Castro Canto e Melo (1797-1867), the Marchioness of Santos in 1827. The

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real floor plan of this palace is used in the novel. After the Marchioness left this residence in 1829, it was bought by Emperor for his legitimate daughter.

The palace is associated with various scandals and had famous owners. In 1857, Irineu Evangelista de Souza (1813-1889), the Baron of Mauá, banker, a pioneer of the industrial era

and the greatest entrepreneur in Brazil, bought the palace and refurbished it.

Around 1910, the residence was bought by the medical doctor Abel Parente, a graduate of the University of Naples (1875), a gynaecologist, who came from Italy to Brazil, passed the necessary Medical College exams and became very successful in his practice. He was an early proponent of women’s health and offered sterilisations in cases of diseases and dangerous

pregnancies. He published various papers on his medical findings.

As Dr. Parente announced his services (rather expensive) in the local press, a very public fallout with fellow physicians ensued. The opposition to his practice created the idea that his methods would afford women the freedom of birth control. Newspapers published articles for and against Dr. Parente. Various writers went on to defend the doctor. Even Machado de Assis in his Sunday chronicles in the newspaper Gazeta de Notícias, in February 1893, includes Dr. Abel. A paper ‘O “caso Abel Parente”, os homens de letras e a disseminação do saber científico nos primórdios da República’ by Leonardo Mendes and Renata F. Vieira published in Revista Maracanan (Edição: n.13, Dezembro 2015, pp. 127-145) gives a good account of the

controversy.

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The interest in psychology was advanced by Wacław Radecki (1887-1953) who

emigrated from Poland to Curitiba in Brazil and went on to work in the capital Rio de Janeiro. After serving in various roles, including an experimental psychology lab, and publishing on psychology in Brazil (his second wife Halina was his assistant) he ended up spurned by fellow psychologists and ended up moving to Montevideo. A list of his publications appears in

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wac%C5%82aw_Radecki_(psycholog).

It should be possible to speculate that Dr. Miroslav Zmuda was somehow inspired by

both Dr. Abel Parente and Wacław Radecki.

The geography of the city with numerous locations is present in the novel. It includes references to the complete re-urbanisation of the city and, particularly, to that of the Morro do Castelo (Castle Hill). A legend, or myth, is associated with it – a lost treasure. The story goes that a huge treasure was hidden in the secret galleries or tunnels of the Morro do Castelo by the Jesuits in colonial times. Jesuits were expelled from all Portuguese colonies in 1759. The hidden treasure legend may have originated during the French invasions of Rio de Janeiro in 1710-11

and retold in various guises.

An important location in the novel is the British Cemetery, Cemitério dos Ingleses, in the borough of Gamboa. John VI of Portugal granted two and a half acres of land near the shore of Guanabara Bay to the British in 1809. The British Ambassador to the Emperor’s court, Percy

Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford, founded the cemetery. The first burial there was held in 1811.

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O Senhor do Lado Esquerdo was written from 1st March 2010 to 20th January 2011. Alberto Mussa, in a personal communication, generously, gave the following account of how the novel originated.

‘When I published O trono da rainha Jinga, I had not yet conceived of the plan of writing a series of historical novels about Rio de Janeiro. The idea cropped up later; I recall giving an interview (cannot remember who was interviewing me) in which I mentioned this plan for five books, each set in a different century of the history of the city.

However, I started translating pre-Islamic Arabic poetry; and that led me to writing another novel, O enigma de Qaf (The riddle of Qaf, Aflame Books). My pentalogy thus remained in oblivion.

Years later, I re-read that old interview; and the idea resurfaced forcefully. At the time, I had immersed myself in mythological readings. I had just reconstructed the cosmological myth of the ancient Tupinambas, in a book entitled Meu destino é ser onça; and that first vague idea gained clear contours.

The Compêndio Mítico do Rio de Janeiro would comprise five detective novels and histories which took place in Rio de Janeiro from the 16th to the 20th century (it was the 21st century already), the grounding of which would be a myth as its sub-textual subject matter. O trono da rainha Jinga complied with this definition; it was based on the myth of Eshu, the trickster in the Yoruba mythology.

O senhor do lado esquerdo was inspired by another Yoruba myth: that of the orisha Logun Ede. This entity is virtually unknown in Africa and Cuba, but continues to be worshipped in Brazil. Logun Ede is the child of the orishas Oshosi and Oshun and conflates the nature of both parents in it. It is, therefore, simultaneously woman and man.

The matter seemed to me to be current; and gave me an opportunity to discuss the frailties of the male nature. That was what I intended to do in O senhor do lado esquerdo. The title of the book was taken from the Logun Ede’s Oriki (a ceremonial greeting formula): ‘L'osi! L'osi’! which I translate as ‘the master of the left side’. Well, it makes total sense, because in the Yoruba cosmological conceptual framework, the left side is the feminine side.

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I began to conceive of the plot from the myth, and the title, choosing the century which would fit best; and so on. As for the details of the process of creation, I remember little, perhaps because they emerged at great speed, from the point at which the abstract conception of the novel was established.

Clearly, as it is a historical novel, I sought to portray the city as it seemed to me to be in 1913, with its social geography, its conflicts and its cultural features.

The choice of the year was not random. At the time of the action, the city did not yet have various elements which would distinguish it from1930: the consolidation of Samba as a musical gender; the central role of the samba schools as representatives of popular culture and art; the massification of football; the expansion of Umbanda (a religion which synthesises the heritage of numerous ethnic groups), etc. And this is important because the ‘Compêndio’ is mythical, that is, as any other myth, it must be set at a moment prior to the current cosmological order.

These are, in general terms, the basic issues I took into account in writing O senhor do lado esquerdo.’ (received in August 2019 and translated by N. Kerecuk) The novel was translated by Alex (Collett) Ladd and published in 2013 by the

independent publisher Europa Editions. Alex Ladd is an interpreter and translator who lives in New Jersey. He holds a BA degree in journalism from the New York University, January 1990. The publishers made a decision to publish O Senhor do Lado Esquerdo as The Mystery of Rio.

Alex Ladd also translated: Sergio Y. by Alexandre Vidal Porto (2016), Life As It Is, Selected Short Stories of Nelson Rodrigues, 314 pgs. Host Publications (2008); The Little Capoeira Book

by Nestor Capoeira (1995).

The translation would benefit from a revision. There is a haphazard use of diacritics in Brazilian words and some are misspelled (Espirto (sic!) Santo, page 105; Saci Pere (Sic!) p.153), the Spanish San instead of the Portuguese São Carlos (page 112). In the introduction, some of the adjectives have a poor translation: ponderados (judicious, balanced) appears as ‘ponderous’,

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comedidos (moderate, unassuming) is rendered as ‘restrained’. Also, there is the unnecessary placing of apostrophe+s (’s) for inanimate words (Committee’s (Sic!) headquarters.

BIOGRAPHY

ALBERTO MUSSA

(28th June1961-)

Photo credits: courtesy of the author, August 2019

Alberto Baeta Neves Mussa was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1961. He is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and translator. He is the son of David Mussa, a judge, son of Greek Orthodox Arab immigrants and Marlene Baeta Neves Mussa, a public servant, descended from

a family from the states of Minas Gerais and Alagoas.

Alberto Mussa attended the Colégio Marista São José (Marist High School) in the borough of Tijuca. At that time he practiced Capoeira and attended samba schools, accompanied by his uncle on his mother’s side, Didi. Didi was the nickname of Gustavo Adolfo de Carvalho Baeta Neves (1936 -1987), a federal prosecutor, and composer, who gained huge celebrity status by parading and singing his own sambas with the Salgueiro and União da Ilha do Governador samba schools.

In 1979, Alberto Mussa started to study for a degree in Math at the Federal University of

Rio de Janeiro but dropped out in 1981 for personal reasons. He began to work as a financial

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assistant in the offices of the shipbuilder ‘Corena Metalurgia e Construções Navais’ in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1987, he graduated in Belles Lettres (Brazilian literature) from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He became a research fellow of the Centre for Afro-Asian Studies of the Cândido Mendes University. In 1988, he taught Portuguese language and literature at state high schools and the Veiga de Almeida University for a short period. In the same year, he was

employed as a lexicographer for the Dicionário Houaiss.

In 1991, Alberto Mussa completed his Master’s Degree at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. His dissertation was on the role of the African languages in the history of Portuguese in Brazil - O papel das línguas africanas na história do português do Brasil. In the same year, he began his PhD studies in Linguistics at the same university. He was going to study the pre-history of the Tupi and Guarani Languages. However, he joined the federal public service in 1992 and abandoned his doctoral research.

His first book of short stories Elegbara was published in 1997. He was also awarded a grant for authors who were in completion phase of their works from the National Library Foundation for his novel O trono da rainha Jinga. The novel was published in 1999. In 2003, he resigned from his federal public service employment.

Other publications followed with success:

2004: the novel O enigma de Qaf recognized by prize awards: Casa de Las Américas and Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Arte.

2005: second edition of O trono da rainha Jinga, by Editora Record, which has been publishing his works since then.

2006: an annotated translation of pre-Islamic Arab poetry -Os poemas suspensos (finalist of the Jabuti Prize) and O movimento pendular, awarded the Machado de Assis and Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Arte Prizes.

2007: second edition of Elegbara. 2008: short stories ‘A leitura secreta’ in the anthology Recontando Machado, and

‘O princípio binário’, in Um homem célebre: Machado recriado. 2009: Meu destino é ser onça, reconstruction of the mythology of ancient

Tupinambás. 2010: with Luiz Antônio Simas, published the essay Samba de Enredo: história e

arte. And the short story ‘De canibus quaestio’ in the anthology Primos: histórias da herança árabe e judaica.

2011: O senhor do lado esquerdo, awarded the Fiction Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the Machado de Assis Prize and a finalist for the Portugal-Telecom Prize. With this novel he resumed the publication of the five detective novels ‘Compêndio Mítico do Rio de Janeiro’.

2012: the short story ‘A milhar do galo’ in the Revista Brasileira, of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

2013: publication of the translation The Mystery of Rio. 2014: A primeira história do mundo, in the ‘Compêndio Mítico’. 2016: Os contos completos. 2017: A hipótese humana, the fourth novel of the series ‘Compêndio Mítico’. 2018: A biblioteca elementar, the last novel of the series ‘Compêndio Mítico’.

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Alberto Mussa’s talent has been recognized with various awards: Casa de Las Américas, the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Oceanos, Machado de Assis and others. His works have been published in nineteen countries and sixteen languages.

He is married to Elaine Vieira Araújo Mussa, an entrepreneur (2004). He has two sons

João de Lima Mussa (1989) and Heitor Vieira Mussa(2013). He is a consecrated Babalaô, an Ifa priest (2008).

The Brazilian Bilingual Book Club at the Embassy of Brazil in London and its Convenor

wish to thank Alberto Mussa for the content and images he provided for this post.

Photo credits: courtesy of the author, August 2019

References and sources

Europa Editions: https://www.europaeditions.com/author/145/alberto-mussa MUSSA, Alberto Baeta Neves. O papel das línguas africanas na história do português do

Brasil. Dissertação (Mestrado em Letras) - Faculdade de Letras, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1991. 242 p.

Interview ‘Meu destino é ser outsider’ for the magazine Candido of the Public Library of Paraná http://www.candido.bpp.pr.gov.br/modules/conteudo/conteudo.php?conteudo=34

Photos of Morro do Castelo: http://brasilianafotografica.bn.br/?tag=morro-do-castelo ; http://brasilianafotografica.bn.br/brasiliana/; http://www0.rio.rj.gov.br/rio_memoria/1922.htm

The legend about the Morro do Castelo treasure: http://artenarede.com.br/blog/index.php/a-lenda-do-tesouro-do-morro-do-castelo/

2019: #AddBraziliannovels2yourReadingLists

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HAPPY READING!

Attendance is free, but booking is essential: nadia.kerecuk@itamaraty.gov.br ©Nadia Kerecuk

Creator and Convenor of the © Brazilian Bilingual Book Club at the Embassy of Brazil in London