Lit in Translation

The Brothers

Dois Irmãos

Milton Hatoum (born 1952)

Translated by John Gledson

English editions

In English

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Decades on, the son of Domingas, a servant in a Lebanese household in Manaus, sets down what he saw as a silent child. At the heart of it is the feud between the twins Yaqub and Omar, fed by a doting mother and a disappointed father, while their sister looks on. The narrator, unsure which of the men under that roof is his own father, pieces events together from memory and from what others confided, as jealousy, desire and vengeance slowly ruin the family and the river port decays with it.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Length
266 pages in the original
Genres
Family (assigned by AI)
Set in
Brazil
First published
2000 by Companhia das Letras
Author's age
48 when first published
ISBN

9788535900132 (original)

9780374141189 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, United States)

9780747557845 (Bloomsbury, United Kingdom)