Description

Daniel Cunha has a lot on his mind.

He got dumped by his pregnant girlfriend, his grandfather just dropped dead and on the anniversary of the raid that doomed his drug-dealing aunt and uncle, his vicious mother is coming home . . .

Misfortune, however, is a Cunha family affair, and no generation is spared. Not Daniel’s grandfather Joao, forced to raise his siblings while still a child himself. Not Joao’s wife, Marta, branded as a bruxa and dragged from her home. And certainly not Maria, so envious of her younger sister’s beauty that she took revenge and fled to the States, abandoning her children.

But now Maria has returned to finally make peace, or so she says. As New Year’s Eve nears, the Cunha family hurtles toward an irrevocable breaking point: a fire, a knife, and a death on the sands of Copacabana Beach.

Publisher Review

One of the most marvellous books I've read in years. Tropicalia is intense, tender, and wise, and it reminds us that for each way that a family is split, it is also doubled; and that for each fury, there's a resplendent underside of love -- Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances A bacchanal of familial entanglements, as beautiful as it is brutal. This is a story of what happens when love is the midwife of destruction, trauma the cousin of redemption, and fate, the absentee mother of us all. I loved this book in all its parts, but as a whole, it left me awestruck -- Jamie Ford, New York Times Bestselling author of The Many Daughters of Afong Moy A formally mesmerizing, ventriloquial, intergenerational epic about the difficulties of being born into a family. Harold's prose moves muscular and propulsive, somehow managing to stay radiating light and grace no matter how cruel the subject matter -- Sean Thor Conroe, author of Fuccboi In these vibrant and hypnotizing pages, Harold has given us so much pain, grace, and love that when I finished reading I called my parents just to hear their voices -- Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau Shoots us out of a cannon from page one . . . With riveting and fearless prose and moments of tension so thick they make your spine tingle, Troplicalia weaves us in and out of the Cunha family's past and one inextricably linked week in their present -- Xochitl Gonzales, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming A riotous search for catharsis and understanding. A powerful debut -- Zoraida Cordova, author of The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina A wild and moving saga, Tropicalia bounds across generations and continents at a breakneck pace -- Jakob Guanzon, author of Abundance