The Apprentice Tourist, Mario de Andrade
The Apprentice Tourist, Mario de Andrade
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The Apprentice Tourist

Author: Mário de Andrade, Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

Narrator: André Santana, Elsa Lepecki Bean

Unabridged: 6 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 04/04/2023


Synopsis

A Brazilian masterpiece, now in English for the first time: a playfully profound chronicle of an urban sophisticate’s misadventures in the Amazon

A Penguin Classic

“My life’s done a somersault,” wrote Mário de Andrade in a letter, on the verge of taking a leap. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, and almost fifty years before Bruce Chatwin ventured into one of the most remote regions of South America in In Patagonia, Andrade, the queer mixed-race “pope” of Brazilian modernism and author of the epic novel Macunaíma, finally embarks on a three-month steamboat voyage up the great river and into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world. Rife with shrewd observations and sparkling wit, The Apprentice Tourist not only offers an awed and awe-inspiring fish-out-of-water account of the Indigenous peoples and now-endangered landscapes of Brazil that he encounters (and, comically, sometimes fails to reach), but also traces his internal metamorphosis: The trip prompts him to rethink his ingrained Eurocentrism, challenges his received narratives about the Amazon, and alters the way he understands his motherland and the vast diversity of cultures found within it.

About The Author

Mário de Andrade (1893–1945) was a Brazilian writer, born in São Paulo, best known for the gleefully anarchic rhapsody Macunaíma, the Hero with No Character (1928). A polymath of his era, he was trained as a musician but became equally influential in fiction, poetry, photography, and art criticism. He served as the founding director of São Paulo’s Department of Culture and helped organize and participated in the Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art) in 1922, an event that would be central to the birth of modernism in Brazil. A key thread of Andrade's work involved the recognition and preservation of Afro-Brazilian cultures and traditions.Flora Thomson-DeVeaux (translator/introducer) is a translator, writer, and researcher whose translation of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis was acclaimed as “a gift to scholars” by The New York Times. She studied Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University and earned a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian studies from Brown University. She lives in Rio de Janeiro, where she is the research director of the podcast series Rádio Novelo.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Hanne on July 23, 2023

Lol this is such a niche book I guess why does it only have 14 ratings on goodreads??? Like not even reviews just 14 ratings? And only one review 😭 Adds up because it was the only copy of it in the travel section of Barnes&Noble lol and only like 1 of 3 books about Brazil (1 was a travel guide). Any......more

Goodreads review by Olivia on May 22, 2023

"The Apprentice Tourist" is an entertaining animated novel that reveals more about the narrator’s own notions of the cultures and environments in which he indulges as opposed to the adventurous voyage itself. Playing on common stereotypes, fantastical images, and sociological references, the author......more

Goodreads review by Marina on February 28, 2025

Eu fiquei tentada a dar 2 estrelas, mas porque tá mais pra 2,5. Não sei muito bem como explicar, mas esse livro simplesmente não bateu com meu santo, achei confuso e difícil de entender muitos termos e gírias, por mais que mario tenha sido um grande escritor e folclorista dentro de uma enormidade de......more

Goodreads review by Adam on March 30, 2024

This is one of those books that will immediately go on my shelf of books that teaches you how to write. It took me forever to sail through the Amazon with Andrade. Life on board. But every few pages I found these bursts of wit, imagination and just brilliant ideas, lies and parables, making previous......more

Goodreads review by Marcus on January 25, 2025

"O turista aprendiz", de Mário de Andrade, é uma publicação da editora "Tinta da China”. Traz 14 fotos feitas pelo autor e mapas. Foi organizada por Flora Thomson De Veaux, diretora de pesquisa da Rádio Novelo. Ela traduziu para o inglês esse mesmo livro e "Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas", de Macha......more


Quotes

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] offer[s] an important corrective in bringing canonical Brazilian works into English.” —The New York Times

“A playful romp . . . The translator ha[s] done remarkable work, approaching the unruly text with joy and scholarship . . . fascination and care.” —Joy Williams, Book Post

“Farce from start to finish . . . Andrade . . . relay[s] details, with wide-eyed credulity, of his extraordinary encounters with indigenous communities, some partially real and others completely falsified, yet always well and truly beyond belief. . . . These as well as other outlandish events . . . Andrade recounts with the straightest of faces. . . . It was in the process of mythmaking that the country of Andrade’s imagination became more vivid, more alive.” —Prospect magazine