Turbulence

Turbulence, first published in Portuguese as Estorvo, is a novel by Chico Buarque, one of Brazil's best-known singers and songwriters. It has been translated into several languages, among them French, German, Italian and Spanish.

The story takes place in the run-down, poverty-stricken outskirts of an unnamed city. Its narrator has no name and drifts through events in a daze. He is an aimless dropout who lives on handouts from his wealthy sister. By birth he belongs to the urban elite, with its luxury seaside apartments, houses concealed behind electrified walls and patrolled by guards with machine guns, absurdly expensive boutiques and shopping centers, lavish parties and trips to Europe. By chance he crosses into the "other Brazil", a world of marginal and petty criminals that presses against the edges of privileged society and threatens to swallow it.

The book is built from a series of intense, cinematic scenes, told with urgency, irony and vivid imagery. It paints an apocalyptic picture of paranoia, lawlessness and the nightmare of city life, and can be read as an extended metaphor for a country facing the danger of violent conflict between rich and poor. Kidnapping, assault, robbery, rape and murder run through its pages.