From the translator

Jose Louzeiro's blunt rendering--a legacy of his years as a journalist--brings to the foreground the repetitive nature of Dito's life and obsessions. Louzeiro's rigorous focus on Dito's point of view alone makes the reader trace the decision-making process that gradually leads to Dito's criminalization. Sympathy for Dito is not asked. This is a story without heroes. Even in Dito's most heroic mode--when he begins to carry the banner of revenge for his friend Pixote's death--Dito does not command praise. His courage is that of the desperate. Capable of bravery and of superhuman efforts, he stands either alone or with his street gang members as representative of millions of abandoned kids in Brazil and in the world.

From the author:

There are 15 million needy or abandoned children in Brazil, waiting for help. They represent about one third of the 48,226,718 Brazilians between the ages of zero to 18, geographically distributed as: North (3.83%), Northeast (31.64%), Southeast (42.91%), South (16.64%) and Center-West (5.08%).

The facts which substantiate this narrative were taken from our bitter daily experience. The author did not worry about arranging them chronologically nor did he abstain from describing brutal situations which show well the level of dehumanization at which society has arrived.

Childhood of the Dead was first published in 1977 and was made into the internationally acclaimed motion picture: Pixote, the Law of the Weakest. It reflects life in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo of the previous decade. But the problem of street children remains. Like Dito, they still wash windshields at stoplights; they beg at restaurants for food; they peddle chewing gum and Kleenex packets; they pick pockets and snitch things from cars; they steal handbags and prey on tourists, just as they do now in major cities in the U.S. from Los Angeles to Miami.

Cover art by Joel Barr

BOSON BOOKS also offers a translated version of Land of Black Clay
by Jose Louzeiro.