After Life

An Ethnographic Novel

Fiction & Literature
Cover of the book After Life by Tobias Hecht, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Tobias Hecht ISBN: 9780822387725
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: April 5, 2006
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Tobias Hecht
ISBN: 9780822387725
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: April 5, 2006
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

Bruna Veríssimo, a youth from the hardscrabble streets of Recife, in Northeast Brazil, spoke with Tobias Hecht over the course of many years, reliving her early childhood in a raging and destitute home, her initiation into the world of prostitution at a time when her contemporaries had scarcely started school, and her coming of age against all odds.

Hecht had originally intended to write a biography of Veríssimo. But with interviews ultimately spanning a decade, he couldn't ignore that much of what he had been told wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. In Veríssimo’s recounting of her life, a sister who had never been born died tragically, while the very same rape that shattered the body and mind of an acquaintance occurred a second time, only with a different victim and several years later. At night, with the anthropologist’s tape recorder in hand, she became her own ethnographer, inventing informants, interviewing herself, and answering in distinct voices.

With truth impossible to disentangle from invention, Hecht followed the lead of Veríssimo, his would-be informant, creating characters, rendering a tale that didn’t happen but that might have, probing at what it means to translate a life into words.

A call and response of truth and invention, mental illness and yearning, After Life is a tribute to and reinterpretation of the Latin American testimonio genre. Desire, melancholy, longing, regret, and the hunger to live beyond the confines of past and future meet in this debut novel by Tobias Hecht.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Bruna Veríssimo, a youth from the hardscrabble streets of Recife, in Northeast Brazil, spoke with Tobias Hecht over the course of many years, reliving her early childhood in a raging and destitute home, her initiation into the world of prostitution at a time when her contemporaries had scarcely started school, and her coming of age against all odds.

Hecht had originally intended to write a biography of Veríssimo. But with interviews ultimately spanning a decade, he couldn't ignore that much of what he had been told wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. In Veríssimo’s recounting of her life, a sister who had never been born died tragically, while the very same rape that shattered the body and mind of an acquaintance occurred a second time, only with a different victim and several years later. At night, with the anthropologist’s tape recorder in hand, she became her own ethnographer, inventing informants, interviewing herself, and answering in distinct voices.

With truth impossible to disentangle from invention, Hecht followed the lead of Veríssimo, his would-be informant, creating characters, rendering a tale that didn’t happen but that might have, probing at what it means to translate a life into words.

A call and response of truth and invention, mental illness and yearning, After Life is a tribute to and reinterpretation of the Latin American testimonio genre. Desire, melancholy, longing, regret, and the hunger to live beyond the confines of past and future meet in this debut novel by Tobias Hecht.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Financial Missionaries to the World by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Revolt of the Saints by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book The Wedding Complex by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Hospital Time by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book The Darker Side of Western Modernity by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Shakespeare, Brecht, and the Intercultural Sign by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Energy without Conscience by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Individual and Community by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book How Nature Speaks by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Living Spirit, Living Practice by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Decolonizing Dialectics by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book The Blood of Guatemala by Tobias Hecht
Cover of the book Dissent from the Homeland by Tobias Hecht
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy