Brazil Red

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

Book Overview

Orphaned children Just and Colombe are brought against their will into Brazil by French colonizers to learn the native language and become interpreters, in an adventure that pits them against such challenges as cannibals, the expedition's eccentric leader, and the days preceding the Wars of Religion

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393052079
• ISBN13: 9780393052077
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 429 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Fun Read and Enlightening

Rufin's story is great adventure told by a subtlety humorous narrator-no small achievement given the seriousness of Brazil Red's themes. This would also be a terrific book for advanced young readers, age fourteen and up. A rare book that makes history real, entertaining, and meaningful. Because of its child protagonists, Just and Colombe, Brazil Red favorably reminded me of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass.

A ripping yarn!

If you approach this book expecting high literature, you're going to be disappointed. It is not cerebral and the writing is at time clumsy. But if you enjoy a historical novel full of derring-do and exotic locales, with good guys and bad guys and a forest full of sixteenth-century proto-Brazilians, go ahead. As in all good adventure yarns, the love scenes (except with the treacherous betrayer) provide nothing but a slowing down of the action. I was driven to research the history of "la France Antarctique" and was introduced to a bit of French history I had never even heard of. I've already passed my copy on to a friend who has reported he's as gripped as I was. And he's a professor of French literature!