For me it’s gotta be “Morte e Vida Severina”/ “Severino Death and Life”. It’s an epic poem narrating the journey of a poor man from Northeastern Brazil, a famously poor and segregated region that’s frequently affected by severe droughts, fleeing from his home and walking to the big city to survive the season. On the way he describes all the misery he experiences and sees.
One stanza that has stuck with me for years goes something like this “And all of us Severinos/With the same lives/Will die of the same/Severe Severino death,/The death died of/Old age before thirty/Of an ambush before twenty/And of hunger day by day/(Of weakness and plague/The Severino death/attacks at all ages/even those not born)
by VA2M
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It’s not a world-class masterpiece or anything, but Bury Me Behind The Baseboard (originally Russian, Похороните меня за плинтусом) holds a very special place in my heart, and I wish it were more well-known. It’s a generational trauma story about a boy living with his grandmother who terrorizes him and everyone around. His Mom is still around, but she lacks the… will, I suppose, to step in, and a lot of her helplessness comes from her own childhood. Of course, the grandmother isn’t a happy and well-adjusted person either. The book covers a very particular sort of familial misery characteristic for the (post-)Soviet countries. It’s all easily recognizable and at times morbidly funny, although I personally could never laugh at any of it. The writing’s not gruesome in the way some books that deal with child abuse are, just… raw.
I am from Spain and the book I am going to mention is already translated into English and was very well received in the United Kingdom, but I think it is relatively unknown in the US and Canada.
This book is called **The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón**. It has been consistently in my top 3 favourite books since I read it a lot of years ago.
I say top 3 and not top 1 because I don’t want to exaggerate and be unsincere. But if you asked my favourite books, this one would be the first to come to mind and I would had to think for a while the other ones.