A poignant meditation on the recovery of personal history, literature, and what it means to have a father.
Young Ciccio's life is full of challenges: romantic failure, an older brother who seems intent on breaking the heart of every beautiful woman in São Paulo, a distant and larger-than-life father. And when he finds, buried in his father's vast library, a troubling letter dated 'December 21, 1931. Berlin', his existential crisis only intensifies.
It seems that his father once had a child with another woman, in Berlin - a son whose fate remains uncertain. Ciccio sets out on a mission to locate his German half-brother, and to win his father's respect. But as Brazil's military government cracks down on dissent, and rumours of arrests and disappearances spread, Ciccio finds that as he has been searching for his German brother he has taken his eye off his immediate family . . .
In writing My German Brother, acclaimed Brazilian novelist and musician Chico Buarque was driven by the desire to find out what happened to his own German half-brother - whether he survived the war in a bomb-ravaged Berlin, or joined the ranks of the Hitler Youth. This novel is the project of a lifetime, a fascinating blend of what happened, what might have happened, and sheer imagination, culminating in an astonishing truth.
