This is my most recent favourite. I was told a few weeks ago that I needed to read Caio Fernando Abreu’s work. He was one of the most influential Brazilian writers of the 1970s and 80s, had I really never heard of him? I slunk away and got hold of this collection. The stories are atmospheric, soaked in alcohol, drugs, sex and loneliness. People are ringing on telephones, hanging around in apartments listening to music (he’ll sometimes provide a soundtrack for the story), as everyone searches for meaning in their lives, full of fear and desire and existential angst. It all felt very familiar, I have spent many hours deep in those conversations. A character walks down a dingy street, a bottle of vodka in one hand, drenched by the rain, pounding on a door that doesn’t open. Abreu’s characters are insecure and lost, but sometimes hilarious, sometimes surreal, and I wanted to spend time with them.

In ‘Fat Tuesday’ it’s all sweat and male desire: “We kept rolling in the sand up to where the waves crashed, so the water would wash the sweat and sand and glitter off our bodies.” It’s Carnival and dancing and glitter – until it isn’t. This is Brazil during the AIDS epidemic, under a military dictatorship where Arreu’s writing about queer erotic life was heavily censored and he was put on the wanted list. “Ai ai, they yelled. Look at them queens.”It’s shocking, and so sad. Seek it out, for this story and the rest.

Originally published in Portuguese in 1982, and first published in English in Moldy Strawberries, Archipelago Books, 2022