The destinies of Indigenous peoples and immigrants, generals and communists, merchants and intellectuals intertwine in this fast-paced and humorous narrative that bounces between Brazil’s great conflicts and the problems of family relationships.
Glorious images and shadowy specters populate the narrator’s imagination as he struggles to survive in a hospital intensive care bed. The glorious images are those of his childhood friend, Noel Nutels. Both are Russian Jews who came to Brazil in 1921, but their paths diverged. Nutels, a left-wing intellectual, studied medicine and dedicated his life to the cause of Indigenous people.
The narrator watches life pass by in a small shop in Bom Retiro, a neighborhood of Sa o Paulo. The shadowy specters are real or imaginary figures that haunt the narrator: the Indigenous people whose graveyard supposedly lies beneath his shop, and the Cossacks who want to exterminate him. Frustrated by his mundane work, in constant conflict with his wife and son, he sees his friend Noel as the shining figure who gives meaning to his existence.
The majesty of the Xingu is a book about Brazilian destinies, spanning several decades of recent Brazilian history and covering moments such as the struggle of communist militants, the extermination of the Indigenous people in the Xingu, and the military coup of 1964.
