Sobre a Imortalidade de Rui de Leão by Machado de Assis

It tells the story of a secret society of righteous women, who call themselves Paladins of the Mist and live on an island on the coast of the state of Ceará, which is concealed from unwanted eyes by a mysterious fog. However, it’s now broadly accepted that our first SFF novel was Rainha do ignoto -written in 1899 by Emília Freitas, a feminist and abolitionist woman from the Northeast of Brazil. According to the book Fantástico brasileiro: o insólito literário do romantismo ao fantasismo by Bruno Anselmi Matangrano and Enéias Tavares, nineteenth-century Brazilian literature had only sporadic manifestations of works with fantastic elements-usually, subtle ones. It’s hard to pinpoint when Brazilian SFF started. And, if I’m to talk about it, I necessarily need to talk about the colonization, cycles, and politics. This may seem a bitter introduction, but it says a lot about our current sociopolitical context-and, consequently, about the state of play of Brazilian SFF. Who would imagine white, rich European descendants would be literally burning the forest down five centuries later, disregarding all native people descendants who still live here? They overwrote its local tupi name ( ibirapitanga ), decided to call it pau-brasil -literally wood-of-ember-and, later, named this place after the resource they mercilessly explored disregarding all native people who lived here. It’s said to come from a native tree of bright red wood, so bright Portuguese colonizers thought it resembled an ember-a brasa. It’s impossible not to think about our country’s name. Backed up by new anti-environmental legislation approved by the Brazilian president, big players of agribusiness simply set the forest on fire. While I write these words, the Amazon rainforest is burning. Joseph of Anchieta in 1560, in one of his letters from Brazil to Portugal

One can’t see nothing besides a flashing beam running around they quickly seize people and kill them, like the curupiras, whatever it is-we don’t know it for sure.

They’re called baetatá, which means “made of fire”. There are also other (ghosts), mainly present at the beaches, usually close to the sea and by the riversides.

Sobre a Imortalidade de Rui de Leão by Machado de Assis