Description

Moises lives with his father and sister in a Brazilian village dominated by the local monastery. His mother having died mysteriously, Moises is raised by his sister Luzia, a young woman rumored to be a witch and despised by the villagers. Luzia seeks protection from the monastery, where she gets a job as a laundress and where Moises receives an education. In time, something triggers her brother to rebel and run away from home. Luzia finds herself wholly alone, fighting for the family’s land and for her life. Unknown to her, Moises, too, has put himself on the front line of an ancient conflict between colonial oppressors and the dispossessed.

Epic and lyrical, with the power to enchant as well as outrage, Saving the Fire presents the ghosts of a family’s past lost amid the shadows of a nation’s history. Masterfully, Itamar Vieira Junior blends the intimate journeys of his characters with faithfully rendered elements of Brazilian life in a world where the scars of colonialism still ache.

Publisher Review

A leading voice among the Black authors who have jolted Brazil's literary establishment in recent years with imaginative and searing works that have found commercial success and critical acclaim * New York Times * An important literary voice * Financial Times * Vieira Junior has been an integral member of a group of Brazilian writers who, in depicting racism and slavery through the viewpoint of racial minorities and enslaved peoples, remind us of Brazil's painful colonial history while returning agency to those who suffered under its one-sided narration * Nation * I am immersed in Saving the Fire, and I can hardly wait for the finale of Vieira's trilogy * New York Review of Books *