Phenotypes - by Paulo Scott (Paperback)

About the Book

A smart and stylish account of the bigotry lurking in our hearts and institutions alike.

Book Synopsis

A smart and stylish account of the bigotry lurking in hearts and institutions alike

Federico and Lourenço are brothers. Their father is black, a famed forensic pathologist for the police; their mother is white. Federico--distant, angry, analytical--has light skin, which means he's always been able to avoid the worst of the racism Brazilian culture has to offer. He can "pass" as white, and yet, because of this, he has devoted his life to racial justice. Lourenço, on the other hand, is dark-skinned, easygoing, and well-liked in the brothers' hometown of Porto Alegre--and has become a father himself.

As Federico's fiftieth birthday looms, he joins a ludicrous yet chilling governmental committee in the capital. It is tasked with quelling the increasingly violent student protests rocking Brazil by overseeing the design of new piece of software that will remove the question of race from the hands of fallible, human, prejudiced college administrators by adjudicating who does and doesn't warrant admittance as a non-white applicant under new affirmative-action quotas. Before he can come to grips with his feelings about this initiative, not to mention a budding romance with one of his committee colleagues, Federico is called home: his niece has just been arrested at a protest carrying a concealed gun. And not just any gun. A stolen police service revolver that he and Lourenço hid for a friend decades before. A gun used in a killing.

Paulo Scott here probes the old wounds of race in Brazil, and in particular the loss of a black identity independent from the history of slavery. Exploratory rather than didactic, a story of crime, street-life and regret as much as a satirical novel of ideas, Phenotypes is a seething masterpiece of rage and reconciliation.

Review Quotes

"A searing indictment of racism and
privilege in Brazil, and an uncompromising challenge to the country's idealised
view of itself as a racial democracy." --Ángel
Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times

"Phenotypes demonstrates how the
traumas of growing up in a racist society can propel a person of color forward
while never letting them escape their past." --Southwest Review

"Phenotypes underscores how difficult antiracist projects can be at
any scale...Scott's characters quickly abandon the possibility of a comprehensive
solution in favor of stopgap measures that may or may not work. Such are the
inadequacies, the novel asserts, of treating entrenched and systemic issues as
if they are only skin-deep." --New York Times Book Review

"This is an artfully plotted tale about race, privilege and
guilt...Phenotypes educates
and entertains in equal measure." --The Observer

"Phenotypes is...brilliant and emotionally resonant. I put
it down days ago, and I'm still walking around with it." --Star Tribune

"A compelling exploration
of the fraught reality of race relations in Brazil . . . there is much that
English-speaking readers stand to gain from the considered, quiet fury of Paulo
Scott's novel, not least the expansion of and challenge to modern-day
discourses on race." --Times
Literary Supplement

"Phenotypes is a complex, stream-of-consciousness novel about
race, culture, and deciding for oneself where one belongs." --Foreword Reviews

"[A] profound story of colorism and familial loyalty set in
Brazil...The multiple layers combine for a mesmerizing and mature story." --Publishers Weekly starred review

"Scott
pours out his indictment of Brazil in long, overflowing sentences that are
equal parts outrage and cutting humor. Originally titled Brown and
Yellow when it was published in Portuguese...it is not easy to shake off." Kirkus Review

"A
blistering examination of Brazil's fraught racial history told through two
brothers, one light-skinned and one dark-skinned." --Katie
Goh, i-D (Books to Read 2022)

"Federico, the white-passing mixed-race
narrator of Paulo Scott's stirring new novel Phenotypes, grips
you from his opening words, and what a story he has to tell. Ostensibly sending
up a Brazilian governmental bureaucracy's attempts to address problems with the
racial quota system in its higher education, Scott quickly shows that he has
penned a profound, coruscating exploration of race, racism, colorism, family
dynamics, class, culture, regionalism, politics, radicalism, and so much more.
Scott's intricate, ironic, entrancing narration, skillfully rendered into
English by Daniel Hahn, confirms Scott as one of Brazil's finest contemporary
writers." --John Keene

"Scott seems to have managed to produce a novel that
will survive the test of time, a profound interpretation of our time and our
country." --Folha de São Paulo

"[Phenotypes'] deftly
engaging plot . . . twists and turns while exploring race, brotherhood,
privilege, and the lasting impact of guilt. Hahn's translation is exemplary,
and although this is not an easy read, it is a journey worth taking." --Joshua
Rees, Buzz

"Phenotypes is
innovative, deftly precise in its form, and utterly profound in its content.
Scott's work in bringing contemporary urgencies into fiction is uncomfortable
and often unsettling, but necessary--and, ultimately, unforgettable." --Rachel
Farmer, Asymptote

Praise for Paulo Scott

"A powerful, complex and very ambitious voice. In the contemporary Latin American literature scene, Paulo Scott is a must-read." --Juan Pablo Villalobos

About the Author

Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

Winner of the 2023 Jabuti Prize in the Brazilian Book
Published Abroad category

Paulo Scott was born in 1966 in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil. At university, he was an active member of the student political movement and was also involved in Brazil's re-democratisation process. For ten years he taught law at university in Porto Alegre; he has now published five books of fiction and four of poetry, and is also a translator from English. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2008 to focus on writing full-time.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with some sixty-something books to his name. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, and he has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others.