A page-turning novel about a Black teen from the Rio slums and an upper-class white girl who are brought together by fate and betrayed by families who threaten to tear them apart—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

“Steamy...breathtaking.”—The New Yorker

They meet by chance on Copacabana Beach: Tristao Raposo, a poor black teen surviving day to day on street smarts and the hustle, and Isabel Leme, an upper-class white girl, treated like a pampered slave by her absent though very powerful father.

Convinced that fate brought them together, betrayed by their families, Tristao and Isabel flee to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wild west—unaware of the astonishing destiny that awaits them….
Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-sixties to the late eighties, BRAZIL surprises and embraces the reader with its celebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence.

"A tour de force … Spectacular." —Time

"Updike's novel, as tender as it is erotic, becomes a magnificently wrought love story…. Beautifully written." —Detroit Free Press

In the dream-Brazil of John Updike's imagining, almost anything is possible if you are young and in love. When Tristão Raposo, a black nineteen-year-old from the Rio slums, and Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, meet on Copacabana Beach, their flight from family and into marriage takes them to the farthest reaches of Brazil's phantasmagoric western frontier. Privation, violence, captivity, and reversals of fortune afflict them, yet this latter-day Tristan and Iseult cling to the faith that each is the other's fate for life. Spanning twenty-two years, from the sixties through the eighties, Brazil surprises with its celebration of passion, loyalty, romance, and New World innocence.

“Steamy . . . breathtaking . . . In Updike’s novel, our vast South American neighbor emerges as a country both ancient and new.”—The New Yorker
 
“There is a wonderful drive to the novel, true lyricism, real drama. . . . Updike has rare insight into the psychology of sexual behavior and the mysterious, almost otherworldly devotedness Tristão and Isabel share.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“The book [is] thrilling, not only by its own rights, as an action-driven narrative designed to thrill, but also as an instance of a contemporary master, one whom we thought we had figured out long ago, daring to reinvent himself before our jaded eyes.”—The New Criterion