Ribeiro, Joao Ubaldo

New York. 1994. Atheneum. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0689121253. Translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers. 357 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Marc Burckhardt. Jacket design by Mary Schuck . keywords: Literature Translated Brazil Latin America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - THE LIZARD'S SMILE is the first novel in five years from the internationally acclaimed Brazilian novelist João Ubaldo Ribeiro. A best-seller in his native land, it is a suspenseful, spirited, and very funny novel about a truly serious subject-the hazards of genetic engineering-that confirms Ribeiro's reputation as one of the masters of the Latin American novel. Set on an island off the coast of Bahia in northeast Brazil, THE LIZARD'S SMILE centers on one João Pedroso, a disenchanted biologist who has given up his profession to become a fishmonger. Kindly if a bit enigmatic, given to drink and rumination, João has recently been disturbed by a vague but pervasive sense 0f evil, manifesting itself chiefly among the island's animal family. Arrayed around him are such figures as the Secretary of Health for Bahia, Dr. Angelo Marcos Barreto, a fastidious, compulsive, and corrupt millionaire who has been diagnosed as having cancer, his much younger wife, Ana Clara, who has developed an appetite for her husband's medicinal stash 0f marijuana, for the seemingly irresistible João, and for a pseudonymous journal in which she records her adventures in high style . Father Monteirinho, the local priest, who finds it increasingly hard to be confidant and drinking partner to his parishioners while exercising his churchly duties, and Dr. Lücio NemEsio, surgeon and director 0f the island's new, state-of-the-art hospital, an older man, easily worried by the behavioral tics he is beginning to witness around him. inventory #20103 ISBN: 0689121253.