A vibe is, by definition, inexplicable. To say Sevastopol’s vibe is a bit gloomy, desolate, styled in a color palette that includes grays, greens, and violets, is both true and inexact. The vibe accumulates over time and amounts to something. But exactly what remains evasive, thrillingly open-ended.

Public Books, Melanie Broder

Three subtly connected stories converge in this chimerical debut, showcasing a powerful new Brazilian voice

Included in the Available Titles catalog

Sevastopol

Fiction by Emilio Fraia

Translated by Zoë Perry

Three subtly connected stories converge in this chimerical debut, each burrowing into a turning point in a person’s life: a young woman gives a melancholy account of her obsession with climbing Mount Everest; a Peruvian-Brazilian vanishes into the forest after staying in a musty, semi-abandoned inn in the haunted depths of the Brazilian countryside; a young playwright embarks on the production of a play about the city of Sevastopol and a Russian painter portraying Crimean War soldiers.

Inspired by Tolstoy’s The Sevastopol Sketches, Emilio Fraia masterfully weaves together these stories of yearning and loss, obsession and madness, failure and the desire to persist, in a restrained manner reminiscent of Anton Chekhov, Roberto Bolaño, and Rachel Cusk.

Paperback(published Jun, 01 2021)

ISBN
9780811230919
Price US
14.95
Trim Size
4.5x7.25
Page Count
128

Ebook

ISBN
9780811230926

audiobook

Portrait of Emilio Fraia

Emilio Fraia

Brazilian writer from San Paulo

A vibe is, by definition, inexplicable. To say Sevastopol’s vibe is a bit gloomy, desolate, styled in a color palette that includes grays, greens, and violets, is both true and inexact. The vibe accumulates over time and amounts to something. But exactly what remains evasive, thrillingly open-ended.

Public Books, Melanie Broder

Quite excellent.

Erin Bloom, Full Stop

As Sevastopol masterfully demonstrates, all one can do against time’s attrition is organize the losses into a story of the self.

Marshall Shord, Southwest Review

These tales don’t operate the way most tales do; they adhere to their own separate sense of languid time.

Tope Folarin, Vulture

A truly beautiful book that is hard to describe without using words like precision, subtlety and, mostly, wisdom.

Alejandro Zambra

With deft precision, Fraia bares his characters just enough to reveal only these stories—nothing is extraneous.

Kirkus

Three stories track the wanderings of contemporary Brazilians in Fraia’s subtle and melancholy English-language debut, a collection inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches.

Publishers Weekly

Like the writers I most admire, Fraia sets for himself the hardest and most respectable task a writer can face: unraveling the mystery without revealing the secret.

Javier Montes

A literary jewel.

Fernanda Torres