Description

Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize
Winner of the 2023 Jabuti Prize in the Brazilian Book Published Abroad category
Federico and Lourenco 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 that Brazilian culture has to offer. He can ‘pass’ as white, and yet, because of this, he has devoted his life to racial justice. Lourenco, on the other hand, is dark-skinned, easy-going, 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 governmental committee in the capital. It is tasked with quelling the increasingly violent student protests rocking Brazil by overseeing the design of a software program that will adjudicate the degree to which each university applicant is sufficiently black to warrant admittance 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 Federico and Lourenco 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.

Publisher Review

'An artfully plotted tale about race, privilege and guilt . . . careful reading proves richly rewarding.' Lucy Popescu, The Observer ---- '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 ---- '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.' Laura Garmeson, Times Literary Supplement ---- '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) ---- 'Phenotypes is...brilliant and emotionally resonant. I put it down days ago, and I'm still walking around with it.' Star Tribune ---- '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 ---- '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 Sao Paulo ---- '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 ---- 'A powerful, complex and very ambitious voice. In the contemporary Latin American literature scene, Paulo Scott is a must-read.' Juan Pablo Villalobos