Book Club: The powerful examination of the complex racial tensions in Brazil

Sheffield Telegraph here publishes an extract from Brazilian writer Paulo Scott's 2022 Booker International Prize-longlisted novel Phenotypes, translated by Daniel Hahn and published by Sheffield press And Other Stories.

Scott appears at Off the Shelf Festival on Monday 17th October, 7.30pm, in conversation with Sheffield writer Désirée Reynolds. This is a rare opportunity to experience one of Brazil’s foremost commentators on race, class and democracy. Revered for his novels, poetry and political profile, Paulo Scott’s latest work is a powerful examination of the complex racial tensions in Brazil: Federico and Lourenço are brothers; their father is black, a famed former forensic pathologist for the police; their mother is white. Federico can ‘pass’ as white, and Lourenço, on the other hand, is dark-skinned. Their niece has just been arrested at a protest carrying a concealed gun. And not just any gun. A stolen police service revolver that Federico and Lourenço hid for a friend decades before. A gun used in a killing.

Extract from Phenotypes

But to get back to this detective person, said my father, who wasn’t about to lose the thread of the conversation, The problem with these guys just joining the force who think they run the show is that they become blind with regard to some of the rules of the game and underestimate those of us who appear to have left the stage, He might try to ruin Roberta’s life and think he’s untouchable and all that, but the two of you know, and my father didn’t look at us as he said this, he looked at our mother, It’s hard to find anybody in the police who doesn’t secretly have feet of clay. My brother and I just stared at him, rather astonished at this, because, over the years, our father, who had become a full-time businessman, had given the impression of having lost his policeman’s hot-headedness, but it seemed not. He’s from Moinhos de Vento, And that’s already enough for us to guess at what’s coming down the track, I said. There’s always some difference between an officer from a poor background and an officer from a rich background, my father said, surprising me again, The tycoons can’t shake that arrogance they have, that overconfidence, it’s something inherent in their class, he said. Once in the VIP area, always in the VIP area, Lourenço said. It might sound strange my saying this, but I learned a lot more about rich people, and especially about rich white people, when I was devoting myself to private security, installing and managing video surveillance systems, organising security escorts, private protection, things our brothers generally can’t pay for, than I did in the police, my father admitted. I can imagine, Lourenço said. Surprised at my father having differentiated between blacks and whites, a rare occurrence indeed, I preferred to say nothing. The fear that the rich whites and upper-middle-class whites feel when a black man is captured on the cameras we’ve installed knocking at the doors of their houses is indescribable, Even if it’s at midday, even if the black man is well dressed, It makes no difference, They go into a panic, If there’s one thing this firm of mine teaches me every day it’s that the rich are getting more and more worried, more and more cowardly and, as a result, they behave worse and worse, That the group of people who think black men and women are disgusting is only growing, That the racism in the heads of these rich people is something that isn’t going to end any time soon, Naïve of anyone to think the contrary, and here he was addressing me, And so, maybe not even because of racism itself, but because of the advantages a person has if they come from where they come from, we can expect total arrogance, total arrogance just to begin with, on the part of this particular officer, my father said. You think so, Father, asked Lourenço. I’m rarely wrong, son, my father said. When I move back here I’m going to make his life hell, I said. All right, Federico, And I’m not going to say you shouldn’t, my father said, But this Douglas fellow is going to run aground all by himself, I can feel that in the air, Even without my ever meeting the man I can sense it’s going to happen, my father said. I don’t want him just to fuck up on his own, Dad, I want to fuck him over myself, And it’s going to be out in the open, it’s going to be all legal and above board, A public denunciation of the way he operates in that little Intelligence and Strategic Affairs division of his, I said. My father sighed, looked at my mother, looked at my brother, said nothing. I glanced over to the door to the hallway that led to the living room, to double-check that it was indeed shut, and then moved closer to the three of them. Douglas told me there’s compelling evidence against Roberta, I whispered. That’s something we’re going to have to find out for ourselves in the coming days, my father said, My work in forensics has always made me suspect and expect the worst of other people, even people I knew and, sometimes, people I liked, since I’ve occasionally caught close colleagues trying to suppress, alter or adulterate evidence. But I can’t imagine anything bad coming from Roberta, On the contrary, if my granddaughter has the courage to fight for other people she can’t, as you’ve said, be one of the bad, What the military police did emptying out that building was inhuman, he stressed. And, controlling myself so as not to exacerbate my niece’s situation, since all of us around that table, even if we might have looked like we were holding firm, were still pretty shaken by everything that had happened, I couldn’t help but notice in those words of my father’s an indisputable recognition of the efforts of one citizen devoting herself to defending the rights of others.

More information here: https://www.andotherstories.org/phenotypes/

Paulo Scott in conversation with Désirée Reynolds at Off the Shelf Festival

7.30pm, Monday 17th October, Creative Lounge, The Workstation, Sheffield

https://offtheshelf.org.uk/event/and-other-stories-showcase-with-paulo-scott-phenotypes/