Read Your Way Through São Paulo

The fifth largest city in the world, São Paulo is not only the richest urban center in Brazil: It is a rhizome fed by conflicting moral, ethical and aesthetic ambitions and imaginations, which lead and influence an entire country’s cultural production.

Absorbing, concentrating, dominating and replicating other collective imaginations in an ongoing colonizing project, today São Paulo is, for better or worse, the place where many decisions are made about what Brazilian cultural identity and Brazilian culture are understood to be. This causes an important number of artists from all over Brazil to migrate here. Among them are writers — including the young Black and Indigenous writers whose fictional narratives are, increasingly, and in ways not yet fully understood, opposing this colonizing project in ambitious ways, with language and characters that would have been unacceptable a few years ago.

São Paulo is a daunting metropolis. What are some books that can help me approach the city?

Conceição Evaristo’s powerful first novel, “Ponciá Vicencio,” translated by Paloma Martinez-Cruz, addresses the emotional impact of structural racism on Black Brazilian people. The eponymous main character, Ponciá, grows up in a small town, Vila Vicêncio, in a Black family working on a small subsistence farm. Her grandfather had been enslaved. Facing racism, Ponciá takes a train to the big city to find a new life. The name of the city is not mentioned, but there is no doubt it is São Paulo.

The São Paulo explored in the literature of the 21st century, as in Evaristo’s novel, is a space in which extreme situations unfold under a regime of oppression directed against those who are outside privileged social groups. This, in a dystopian way, is very well addressed by the writer Ignácio de Loyola Brandão in his novel “And Still the Earth,” in a translation by Ellen Watson. In this work of speculative fiction, set in a future São Paulo, “the System” governs its subjects’ every movement and thought.

Another important author for understanding São Paulo, and Brazil, is Carolina Maria de Jesus. Among her books, “Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus,” in a translation by David St. Clair, stands out. De Jesus was a contemporary of the world-renowned novelist Clarice Lispector, whose works capture that other important Brazilian city, Rio de Janeiro. There is an interesting dialectic between these two great writers that reveals Brazilian subjectivities.

The city is known for its bookstores. What are some of your favorites?

While it may not have the natural beauty of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo is a metropolis where encounters, conviviality and affection are fostered by its parks, theaters, museums, cultural spaces, cinemas, restaurants and bookstores. I cannot imagine São Paulo without the charm of its bookshops.

I live a few yards away from what I consider the best bookstore in town: the Ria Livraria in Vila Madalena, in the western part of São Paulo. It stocks nearly exclusively books by independent publishers. More than a place that sells books, it’s also a bar where you can find cheap beer and the best pastel de carne, a kind of meat-filled pastry (it’s hard to explain in a few words the magical experience of eating a Brazilian pastel). It is a place where concerts, readings and debates take place. It is where the newest generation of writers, as well as more established and acclaimed writers, can be found.

Another bookstore that deserves your attention is 1DASUL, run by the writer Ferréz — a bookstore that serves a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of São Paulo.

Martins Fontes, on Avenida Paulista, a major avenue lined with big glass buildings housing banks and cultural centers, has perhaps the largest collection of books by Brazilian authors translated into English, including a great collection of children’s books and art books about Brazil and Brazilian culture written in English.

There’s also Megafauna, in the historic center of São Paulo, on the ground floor of the city’s most emblematic residential building — the snaking, Modernist housing block called Edifício Copan. The building itself is well worth visiting: It was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, the architect who also designed the country’s capital, Brasília, and the United Nations building in New York. His thoughts and impressions of Brazil and São Paulo can be found in his memoir, “The Curves of Time,” in a translation by Izabel Murat Burbridge.

And there’s more. Mandarina offers the best home delivery options in town. Gato Sem Rabo only sells books written by women, including Sueli Carneiro, one of the most important Brazilian thinkers, as well as Andréa del Fuego, Eliana Alves Cruz and Cidinha da Silva, three of the most celebrated Brazilian writers in recent years. And Patuscada, which is run by the poet Eduardo Lacerda and his wife, Pricila Gunutzmann, belongs to Patuá, perhaps the most important independent publishing house in Brazil. Among their books — unfortunately not available in English translation yet, so you’ll have to wait! — are “Ao pó,” by Morgana Kretzmann, and “Nossa Teresa: Vida e Morte de Uma Santa Suicida,” by Micheliny Verunschk, both of which are winners of the Prêmio São Paulo, one of the three most important literary prizes in Brazil.

And what about the libraries? I’ve heard the city has a particularly wide range.

Also in the historic center of São Paulo, a few steps from Edifício Copan, is the Mário de Andrade Library, the first and main public library in the city, which houses an important collection as well as a theater and study and meeting spaces. Mário de Andrade was an important Brazilian writer who, among other fundamental works, wrote the foundational work of Brazilian Modernism, the poetry collection “Hallucinated City,” which explores the increasingly urban and chaotic metropolis.

Also close to my house is the Alceu Amoroso Lima Public Library, which is the only large public library in Brazil dedicated exclusively to poetry. There you can find many poetry books by Brazilian authors translated into English — for example, “Rilke Shake,” by Angélica Freitas, whose work is an example of how some of the best Brazilian poetry today is being written by women and transgender authors. The English translation of the book, by Hilary Kaplan, was a deserving winner in 2016 of the Best Translated Book Award given by Three Percent, the literary magazine of Open Letter Books, and the National Translation Award, given by the American Literary Translators Association.

Another library that cannot be missed is the Biblioteca de São Paulo, built where one of the largest prisons in the country, the Complexo Penitenciário do Carandiru, used to be. The routine and idiosyncrasies of the prison, where a security crackdown left 111 inmates dead in 1992, was transfigured into fiction by Drauzio Varella, who volunteered as a doctor in the prison for over a decade, in a book that was a best seller in Brazil: “Lockdown: Inside Brazil’s Most Dangerous Prison.”

If the weather is beautiful, what are some parks where I could sit outside with a book?

I can’t talk about São Paulo without mentioning its parks, in particular: Ibirapuera, Villa-Lobos and Água Branca. Ibirapuera Park, with its concert venues, planetarium, library, museums and exhibition spaces, is a favorite of residents of the city. If there is time to visit just one of the city’s many parks, make it Ibirapuera.

In Villa-Lobos Park, you’ll find one of the most modern libraries in São Paulo. The park itself is part of an environmental recovery project on the west side of the city.

Originally designed for agricultural research and animal exhibitions, Água Branca Park, one of the oldest parks in São Paulo, is home to one of the city’s main organic farmer’s markets. It also has a reading space with children’s books. (Speaking of children’s book, I’d recommend the work of Ana Maria Machado, a winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for lifetime achievement, given by the International Board on Books for Young People, for books that include “The History Mystery.”) The park is also the setting for one of the most important passages in “Resistance,” by Julián Fuks, which won awards in Brazil and abroad.

One more note: Do get around the city using the public transport system. São Paulo’s subway, trains and buses are the best in Brazil. Much more of the city — this city that is so complex and exciting — will be revealed as you travel.

Paulo Scott’s São Paulo Reading List

“Ponciá Vicencio,” Conceição Evaristo, translated by Paloma Martinez-Cruz

“And Still the Earth,” Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, translated by Ellen Watson

“Child of the Dark,” Carolina Maria de Jesus, translated by David St. Clair

“The Curves of Time,” Oscar Niemeyer, translated by Izabel Murat Burbridge

The works of Sueli Carneiro

The works of Andréa del Fuego

The works of Eliana Alves Cruz

The works of Cidinha da Silva

“Ao pó,” Morgana Kretzmann

“Nossa Teresa: Vida e Morte de Uma Santa Suicida,” Micheliny Verunschk

“Hallucinated City,” Mário de Andrade, translated by Jack E. Tomlins

“Rilke Shake,” Angélica Freitas, translated by Hilary Kaplan

“Lockdown: Inside Brazil’s Most Dangerous Prison,” Drauzio Varella

“The History Mystery,” Ana Maria Machado

“Resistance,” Julián Fuks, translated by Daniel Hahn

Paulo Scott is the author of, among many works, the novels “Phenotypes,” which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and “Nowhere People,” which won the Machado de Assis Prize, given by the Brazilian Academy of Letters.