Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Be transported from the shanty towns of Brazil to the rich opulence of São Paulo and see the changes through the eyes of a young boy who takes that very journey.
Heliopolis
What you need to know before your trail
Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he played as a young boy and it transported into a world of luxury and comfort. his mother worked as a cook for a rich family who own a farm not far from the city and is later Ludo’s home.
Now 27, he works in São Paulo for a communications company but his world is like a chess board where he moves from poverty to wealth, madness and a world built on brutality and pain.
Alienation can affect rich and poor and often both. An interesting look at the world.
Travel Guide
The novel opens with an image of the city seen through the gaps in the window blinds-
They track smoothly upwards and the city, bile yellow , pours in from every direction.
Such a visceral image and this is only the first of many. The one just before where he is in bed with his adoptive sister is worse yet it sets the scene for the type of raw emotions that this book is going to provoke most likely as it did us.
Modern day Sao Paulo, is dirty, busy, noisy and chaotic. The traffic is madness to the point that it states that anyone who is anyone gets driven to work these days. And to protect against kidnapping, there is a new law which states that a red traffic light simply means proceed with caution as opposed to stop.
The city has many an ugly side but then the beauty of turning the corner is al too real. Poverty versus the wealthy areas?
Derelict skyscrapers are not uncommon in the city centre as its easier to knock then down and rebuild when they’re old. “ But turn a corner and you might find lush foliage, pristine pavements smoked-glass security gatehouses…
And a line which unites those with an identity and those without –
“A community stops being classed as one ( a favela ) when its streets make it on to official maps.”
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Heliopolis
Author/ Guide: James Scudamore Destination: São Paulo Departure Time: 2000s
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