The Spies
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A frustrated publisher receives a mysterious angst-ridden manuscript: 'a friend' must send it in installments; its contents would put the author in danger.
As he pieces together the story, he learns that the author is the wife of one of the two Martelli brothers - gangsters who dominate a small town in the Brazilian interior. Surely her dark outpourings are a cry for help?
One by one, he dispatches his motley collection of friends to Frondosa - a town totally obsessed with five-a-side football - to investigate and to bring her to safety.
Luís Fernando Veríssimo
Luís Fernando Veríssimo is a satirist, cartoonist, translator, television writer, saxophonist, playwright and novelist. With over sixty published titles, he is one of the most popular of contemporary Brazilian writers.
Margaret Jull Costa
Translated by
MARGARET JULL COSTA has been a translator of Spanish and Portuguese literature since 1987. Among the other authors she has translated are Paulo Coelho, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, Bernardo Atxaga and Javier Marías. Her work has brought her various awards, the most recent being the 2008 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Award and the 2008 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize for her translation of Eça de Queiroz’s masterpiece The Maias.
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