Archaic Farming

Do not expect a romance. A pagan ritual. An implosion of the family model. An affront to Christian morality. An ode to the inevitable. A prodigal son, feverish with desire, guilt, rebellion. Do not expect simplicity. Tradition suffocates, love chokes, the father commands with a divine hand, the mother is the silence that consents to the order of sacrifice.

A vertigo cut through by biblical, delirious images. And a lyricism that approaches the profane as much as the sacred. Or what there is of one in the other. Dense as wet earth, impregnated with blood, sweat.

This is not about running away from home. It is about order and what it represents. And about its end. Tragic in the literary sense of the word. The relationship with his sister Ana. The taboo laid bare from the very first lines.

Do not expect, at any moment, any kind of consolation.

Raduan Nassar, born in 1935, was never the writer that critics love to applaud. The son of Lebanese immigrants, he abandoned literature to devote himself to agriculture. Only three published works - Lavoura Arcaica, Um Copo de Cólera, Menina a Caminho. Unavoidable.