Apprentice Tourist

'My life's done a somersault,' wrote acclaimed modernist writer Mário de Andrade. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, he finally embarked on a three-month odyssey up the great river and into the wild heart of his native Brazil with a group of avant-garde luminaries. All abandoned ship but a socialite, her two nieces, and, of course, the author himself. And so begins the humorous account of Andrade's steamboat adventure into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world.

Rife with shrewd observations and sparkling wit, his sarcastic, down-to-earth diary entries not only offer comedic and awe-inspiring details of life and the landscape but also trace his internal metamorphosis: his travels challenge what he thought he knew about the Amazon, and drastically alter his understanding of his motherland.

Reviews

The Apprentice Tourist shows Andrade’s fascination with Amazonian cultures — and his utter boredom with the government officials and elites who welcomed the group of travelers along the way . . . it offers an important corrective in bringing canonical Brazilian works into English