Praise for The Book of Affects

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Sex, desire, betrayal, and murder populate the nine engrossing stories of Marilia Arnaud’s new collection, The Book of Affects, translated by Ilze Duarte. The stories revolve around unreliable narrators who lie, cheat, and try to justify themselves, in fascinating portraits of the way we lie to ourselves to keep living. Using acute psychological realism, this book explores the way our fates are often out of our hands and our reason is overcome by our passions.

--Andrew Bertaina, author of The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place

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In The Book of Affects, Arnaud closely examines human relationships in a globalized society, the generalized failure of affective connections, and our unwitting commodification of one another. Her characters struggle with the impossibility of finding authentic communication, turning instead to what is most alien or abject and, thus, fascinating. Her stories are both disturbing and compelling, and Ilze Duarte’s excellent translation skillfully recreates that fine balance.
--Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey, translator of Ursula by Maria Firmina dos Reis
 

Ilze Duarte’s first book-length translation begins with a call to listen. Through Duarte’s intuitive translation and Marília Arnaud’s critically acclaimed prose, readers should do exactly that: listen. A recipient of the Sundial House 2024 Literary Translation Award, Duarte guides nine short stories from the original Portuguese to English with brushstrokes of both languages. Duarte’s translation becomes a conversation between two contemporary artists, both with their own individual ties to Brazil and unique voices.

“Fervor and dedication, I now know, she only had for her poetry. Late into the night, struggling with the words, laboring over her verse, a treasure she would entrust to me the next morning.”

Entrusted with this translation, Duarte honors Arnaud’s words and vision, love of a country, culture, and people.

--Amy Cippola Barnes, author of Child Craft

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Marilia Arnaud’s stories are a reverie into all things love—the familiar and the carnal, the celebrated and the forbidden. These lyrical vignettes into many intimate lives are handled deftly by translator Ilze Duarte, whose own poetic talents shine through in each sentence. The Book of Affects is a welcome addition to translations of Brazilian literature.

--DeMisty D. Bellinger, author of All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere and New to Liberty

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Marilia Arnaud's The Book of Affects plays into the splendid multiplicity of its titular word. 'To affect' is to cause something to change, but 'an affect' is also a word that refers to a person's emotional state or mood, as well as the facial expressions, gestures, and physical displays that accompany an emotion. Close reading and attention verges on obsessiveness as the protagonists wring gestures for meaning and probe the grinding teeth of their beloveds for emotional verities. Each short story opens into the silences and unsayables of a different affective relationship, where meaning is negotiated intersubjectively. Interior turmoil appears in sumptuous, sensuous language; the intensity of Arnaud's descriptions devoured me, to the point where I could smell the dolor mixing with rue as a couple pulled away from each other. An unforgettable world of intimate registers and catastrophic proximities, a book so opulent and haunting that I hesitate to compare it to anything other than itself.

--Alina Stefanescu, author of Dor and My Heresies.

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