Lima Barreto

Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (in English: The Tragic Fate of Policarpo Quaresma) is Barreto's magnum opus, first published in 1911. It tells the story of Policarpo Quaresma, a radical Brazilian patriot. Policarpo's dearest dream is to see Brazil as one of the world's most powerful nations. He notices many problems in the political and social structure of his country, realizing that Brazilian people love European culture more than their own country's and tries to change this reality.

The story, then, can be divided in three distinct parts:

The cultural reform

Policarpo Quaresma tries to change the Brazilian official language (Portuguese) to Tupi, a Native American language. He sends a letter to the Government, asking for the Tupi language to be adopted as the official language of Brazil. His curious request soon becomes news, and Policarpo is ridiculed by the local press. Quaresma then retreats to the town of Curuzu, in rural Rio de Janeiro, where he begins a new activity;

The agricultural reform

Policarpo constructs, with the help of an old black man, a little farm and tries to sell his products to the capital. His desire is to make people see how valuable could be the Brazilian lands. Unfortunately, a plague invades his field and he begins a little war against the ants and the vermin. A local politician then arrives in his home praying for electoral support, but Policarpo refuses the offer. Then, by revenge, the politician starts to damage Policarpo's farm. At this moment, Brazil has sunken into chaos due to popular revolutions, and Policarpo is recruited to the Revolta da Armada war;

The military reform

While trying to defend a fort, Policarpo sees many problems in the Brazilian military structure and sends a letter to the president, Floriano Peixoto, a rude and ignorant man, praying for better conditions for the war prisoners and the other soldiers of the fort. Floriano, when reads the letter, considers Policarpo a revolutionary man and condemns him to death. At the end of the story, Policarpo Quaresma is killed for high treason.

A collection of tales that Lima Barreto published in newspaper during the period of 20 years, approximately. It tells the life and customs of the People of Bruzundanga, an imaginary country that represents Brazil. In the book, tale by tale, Barreto tells of the corruption present in every sector of the Bruzundanga's life, from politics to education.

Lima Barreto decided to create a new country to represent Brazil in order to escape from politician and any other authority's persecution. In fact, The Bruzundangas itself is a great allegory to Brazilian famous personalities and public institutions. A notorious example can be found in the book's first chapter, which is called "Special Chapter": the narrator teaches about Bruzundanga's literature, which is conduced by the elitist school of the "Samoiedas". In this literary school, the students get satisfied "only with shallow literary appearances and an ordinary simulation of notoriety, sometimes because of their intellectual incapacity and some other times by a vicious and careless instruction", as Barreto himself wrote. In this case, the "Samoiedas' school" is an allegory to the Brazilian classical writing style, which was still heavily influenced by the Parnassianism and Symbolism.

This posthumous novel presents the character Clara dos Anjos, a girl from a poor family that lives in the suburb of Rio de Janeiro. The story is about Clara's passion for Cassi Jones, an unscrupulous boy and son of a richer family. Cassi, who has made an uncountable number of women pregnant and abandoned them all, seduces Clara for his libidinous purposes. Clara, who is innocent due her parents' severe protectionism, ends up pregnant. At the end, Cassi flees and Clara finds herself abandoned and "dishonored". In his book, Barreto intends to show how disgraced is the destiny of poor women in Brazil, as he demonstrates in Clara's last quote: "We are nothing in this life". More than that, however, the author also shows the hypocrisy of rich people (mainly represented by Cassi's mother, who constantly protects her son) and the absurd selfishness of the Brazilian youth (represented by the character Cassi Jones).

• O Subterrâneo do Morro do Castelo (1905)
• Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha (1909)
• O Homem que Sabia Javanês e outros contos (1911)
• Vida e Morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá (1919)
• Cemitério dos Vivos (1920)
• Histórias e Sonhos (1920)
• Outras Histórias e Contos Argelinos (1952, posthumous)
• Coisas do Reino de Jambom (1953, posthumous)
• Sátiras e outras subversões: textos inéditos (2016, posthumous, edited by Felipe Botelho Corrêa)