Cenas da Vida Minúscula (Scenes from a tiny life) is Moacyr Scliar’s coming of age novel. Written at a dizzying pace, the story manages to encompass a vast fictional universe, which begins in ancient times and extends to the present day, passing through 16th century Europe, where magic, alchemy, astrology, and the Kabbalah coexist with scientific progress and maritime discoveries.
In a hallucinatory narrative, wizards, kings, adventurers, prophets, and beautiful women are joined by miniature human beings – the homunculi – born of the obsession of the wizard Habakkuk. From biblical landscapes to the Amazon rainforest, the story culminates in the delirious passion of an ordinary man for a magnificent descendant of the homunculus tribe, who stands only 10 centimeters tall.
Cenas da Vida Minúscula is a novel of impossibilities and contrasts: the mysticism of the past and the technology of the present. The jungle and the city. The tiny and the gigantic. It is an allegory of Brazil today.
