What do you think?
Rate this book
The Celebration
The gathering of a wealthy group of people for a birthday party and the attempt by migrant workers to form a settlement provide the background for Angelo's stark portrait of the social and political realities of Latin American life
224 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
3 people are currently reading
361 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 14, 2021
if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com
270119 from 80s: this is the first brazilian book i read that is not amado such as Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. as other reviewers are accurate in describing the novel structure (see Troy), all i can add is how strongly i enjoyed this book, though some of that might just be sentimental. i read this about the stage i first got interested in ‘literature’, in postmodern work, about the age others might read something like joyce, other modernists, though the others i had read at this time were robbe-grillet Jealousy & In the Labyrinth and mishima Spring Snow... brazil as a place fascinates me. the way all the information is laid out for the reader, who must write the story herself, with minimal authorial aid- for me this is guarantee of intimate relationship to the text, powerful emotions resonate without being didactic or moralistic, seeming to emerge from the various sources spontaneously...
270119 from 80s: this is the first brazilian book i read that is not amado such as Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. as other reviewers are accurate in describing the novel structure (see Troy), all i can add is how strongly i enjoyed this book, though some of that might just be sentimental. i read this about the stage i first got interested in ‘literature’, in postmodern work, about the age others might read something like joyce, other modernists, though the others i had read at this time were robbe-grillet Jealousy & In the Labyrinth and mishima Spring Snow... brazil as a place fascinates me. the way all the information is laid out for the reader, who must write the story herself, with minimal authorial aid- for me this is guarantee of intimate relationship to the text, powerful emotions resonate without being didactic or moralistic, seeming to emerge from the various sources spontaneously...
January 21, 2010
Celebration is an odd book, set up like a puzzle, with the book's pivot or cusp (the party) conspicuously missing. It is a book with a hollow middle. You, the reader, have to reassemble the book's events and put them in the proper order. In a way, it's like reading disjointed articles from newspapers, society pages, short stories and magazines, and trying to figure out how and why all of them are connected. And they are connected, but the connection, the party, is missing.
The first half of the book is the lead up to the hedonistic artist's party. It starts with a montage of clippings (faux newspaper articles, police testimonies, other 'official' texts) that follow the aftermath of a violent peasant uprising: a group of starving farmers from the North have come down to the city to escape death. The police and the government pen them down and a young journalist and an older radical convince them to march. Many die.
After the stilted documentation of violence, we are thrust into inter-personal dramas written in various novelistic styles. For the most part, we follow a group of spoiled cafe intellectuals trapped in hedonism and inertia. The author is definitely a member of that group - he constantly chides himself for not finishing the novel that you're reading, and he constantly laments his inaction against his country's repressive politics.
The last half of the book follows the aftermath of the violent suppression and occurs after the party. We find out how and why the party is connected to the uprising (largely circumstantial). The last half of the book is even more fragmented than the first, and stylistically, even more experimental. The author constantly intrudes with his own notes, various explanations, additional story ideas and meta-commentary.
The novel "radically problematizes the very notion of representation, whether journalistic or novelistic." It is a "performance of unmasking, one that reveals the processes [and systems and myths:] which sustain a given–patriarchal, capitalistic, military–order."[source:] My only complaint with the book is that the author's constant interruptions and meta-digressions is too self-referential and bogs the book down in navel-gazing. (BTW, the book's fore-edge is physically split into a white section and a black section (the second half has the black border.))
Also, the original title is A Fiesta, and I think a better translation would be The Party since the book revolves around a party we are never privy to, but then again, the celebration can sardonically refer to the demented mob-like events that happen before and after the party.
BTW, as a physical object, Angelo has made something fantastic: the book's fore-edge is vertically split into a white section and a black section (the first half is white, the second half is black). Picture a phone book with a border split between white pages in the front and black pages in the back, and you will get the idea. It's clever and it works for the story.
The first half of the book is the lead up to the hedonistic artist's party. It starts with a montage of clippings (faux newspaper articles, police testimonies, other 'official' texts) that follow the aftermath of a violent peasant uprising: a group of starving farmers from the North have come down to the city to escape death. The police and the government pen them down and a young journalist and an older radical convince them to march. Many die.
After the stilted documentation of violence, we are thrust into inter-personal dramas written in various novelistic styles. For the most part, we follow a group of spoiled cafe intellectuals trapped in hedonism and inertia. The author is definitely a member of that group - he constantly chides himself for not finishing the novel that you're reading, and he constantly laments his inaction against his country's repressive politics.
The last half of the book follows the aftermath of the violent suppression and occurs after the party. We find out how and why the party is connected to the uprising (largely circumstantial). The last half of the book is even more fragmented than the first, and stylistically, even more experimental. The author constantly intrudes with his own notes, various explanations, additional story ideas and meta-commentary.
The novel "radically problematizes the very notion of representation, whether journalistic or novelistic." It is a "performance of unmasking, one that reveals the processes [and systems and myths:] which sustain a given–patriarchal, capitalistic, military–order."[source:] My only complaint with the book is that the author's constant interruptions and meta-digressions is too self-referential and bogs the book down in navel-gazing. (BTW, the book's fore-edge is physically split into a white section and a black section (the second half has the black border.))
Also, the original title is A Fiesta, and I think a better translation would be The Party since the book revolves around a party we are never privy to, but then again, the celebration can sardonically refer to the demented mob-like events that happen before and after the party.
BTW, as a physical object, Angelo has made something fantastic: the book's fore-edge is vertically split into a white section and a black section (the first half is white, the second half is black). Picture a phone book with a border split between white pages in the front and black pages in the back, and you will get the idea. It's clever and it works for the story.
March 12, 2026
What a strange, oddly enthralling, thoroughly confusing, and satisfying novel this was. I first read this more than four decades ago. It was way over my head; I blame youth. Having recently read Stefan Zweig’s impressions of Brazil in the late 1930s, why not, I thought, revisit a novel from the 1970s set with the backdrop of Brazilian political history and culture since then even though I’m quite the novice on all things Brazil.
Details about the event implied in the title of Ângelo’s novel, The Celebration, are omitted, almost completely. The exception is the insertion of himself, the book's author, into the narrative describing why he decided to keep it out and focus on the before and after, even providing a short draft of what he “deleted.” It’s not that simple, though. Ângelo also puts in random bit of clues – dialogue, short character sketches, implications of other events, often unexplained. The reader has the task of putting it all together, something that seems impossible in the first quarter of this short novel.
The final page mostly resolves what an attentive reader had been able to piece together. Mostly. There’s certainly a point for everything, and I think I caught most of it. But that fact that I didn’t with a few did nothing to take away from my enjoyment. The missing “star” of the review is on me, not Ângelo. His method of pointing out realities of censorship, how they are experienced, how we have to work to find the truth, and even then we can’t really be sure we have the full picture is the author’s triumph, not a fault.
Two sections stood out in particular, perhaps because the fictional celebration was held on the night of March 30, 1970. Just days earlier I finished reading a history of the Kent State shooting in the United States that occurred on May 4, 1970. Two internal monologues, one by the mother of a college student she fears is “a radical,” the other of a commander of Brazilian secret police, the DOPS, could be inserted into any Vietnam-era history about the American right.
Although the top governing authorities are not mentioned, we learn what the nation's leader really thinks about his years in power sometime before he is poisoned on a flight to Paris, at age 73. It could be in any newspaper or blogpost anywhere today:
Details about the event implied in the title of Ângelo’s novel, The Celebration, are omitted, almost completely. The exception is the insertion of himself, the book's author, into the narrative describing why he decided to keep it out and focus on the before and after, even providing a short draft of what he “deleted.” It’s not that simple, though. Ângelo also puts in random bit of clues – dialogue, short character sketches, implications of other events, often unexplained. The reader has the task of putting it all together, something that seems impossible in the first quarter of this short novel.
The final page mostly resolves what an attentive reader had been able to piece together. Mostly. There’s certainly a point for everything, and I think I caught most of it. But that fact that I didn’t with a few did nothing to take away from my enjoyment. The missing “star” of the review is on me, not Ângelo. His method of pointing out realities of censorship, how they are experienced, how we have to work to find the truth, and even then we can’t really be sure we have the full picture is the author’s triumph, not a fault.
Two sections stood out in particular, perhaps because the fictional celebration was held on the night of March 30, 1970. Just days earlier I finished reading a history of the Kent State shooting in the United States that occurred on May 4, 1970. Two internal monologues, one by the mother of a college student she fears is “a radical,” the other of a commander of Brazilian secret police, the DOPS, could be inserted into any Vietnam-era history about the American right.
Although the top governing authorities are not mentioned, we learn what the nation's leader really thinks about his years in power sometime before he is poisoned on a flight to Paris, at age 73. It could be in any newspaper or blogpost anywhere today:
Yet in those twenty-six years he seldom spoke, discreet old fox, and only broke his silence in ’72, self-critically: “The evil of all dictatorships is that they are incapable of limiting themselves in time. And what is worse: there slowly gathers around them a vast lobby of purely self-interested parties solely intent upon their self-perpetuation, hoping only to preserve the status quo at any cost. And these self-interested parties as a rule will isolate the chief of state and thereby keep him out of touch with the changing reality of the nation. And such dictatorships, which generally have been instituted with the very best intentions and have produced materially beneficent results in a relatively short period of time, suffer a change, begin to lose their character, and concentrate almost exclusively upon remaining in power.”
Read
February 24, 2025I admire the innovative structure and range of voices, but also wonder if the scattered episodes are too diffuse and far-flung to offer enough satisfaction. The Celebration is most successful at conjuring the subtly toxic texture of everyday life under dictatorship, a gloomy undercurrent that courses through every page, constricting the characters' lives and eventually tainting the narrative itself. In that way, the novel feels unsettlingly timely - a portrait of how life under dictatorship slowly corrodes everything it touches.
March 10, 2021
Acho que esse é mais interessante como projeto do que como livro ou história e é bom que ele nem disfarça. É um livro um tanto político, com intenção. Curti essas coisas dele, não gostei de alguns clichês bobos e repetições só pra manter o estilo, mas não são muitos. É outro que poderia ser atualizado e também adaptado para uma série interessante.
June 2, 2019
Em nove textos curtos que trafegam entre o estilo de contos e registros quase jornalísticos, o autor faz um retrato da sociedade e dos subterrâneos da ditadura entre as décadas de 1960 e 1970 no Brasil. Lamentavelmente, algumas passagens e situações são muito atuais. A se lamentar, também, não ter uma edição atualizada há mais de 20 anos.
March 8, 2014
The second chapter of my dissertation is about this novel. It is considered one of the best, if not the best, novel of the dictatorship from Brazil. This is true experimental fiction. The structure is very unusual and surprising!
March 17, 2020
É bom, mas penso se seria tão impactante se não fosse o contexto histórico da época.
October 22, 2017
Der Autor nähert sich dem Ereignis auf vielfältige Weise. Er erhellt mit Zitaten aus Büchern und Zeitungsberichten die Hintergründe der Flucht der Landarbeiter und die Biographie des Organisators des Fluchtversuchs, der eine bewegte Vergangenheit als Guerillero hat. Darauf werden in kurzen Dialogen und Erzählungen die Beteiligten in für sie charakteristischen Lebenssituationen dargestellt. So schildert er die Kindheit des homosexuellen Veranstalters des Festes mit der besonderen Vaterbindung. Eine wirklichkeitsfremde und ichbezognene Klatschkolumnistin wird durch ihren vermeintlichen Liebhaber, den oben genannten Mann, portraitiert. Der Geheimdienstchef wirft sich gar in einer Art Verteidigungsrede als Ver¬teidiger der Aufklärung auf und entlarvt damit indirekt die Ver-messenheit und Arroganz des Apparates. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Ereignisse zeichnet der Autor ein ungeschöntes, facettenreiches Bild der brasilianischen Gesellschaft, in der die Entscheidungen eines Einzelnen nicht zählen, und soziales Engagement folgenlos bleibt.
Der Autor scheint gegen alle Simplifizierung der gesellschaftli¬chen Verhältnisse anzuschreiben, besonders gegen das Bild von der politischen Wirklichkeit, das die sehr einflußreiche Geheimpolizei verbreitet. Dabei ist ein aufklärerischer Anspruch unverkennbar. In einer Art Collage aus fiktiven und authentischen Elementen hat er die angemessene Form für seine vielschichtige Erzählweise ge¬funden.
All diese Eigenschaften machen das Buch lesenswert, nicht zuletzt deswegen, weil es dem Klischee von lateinamerikanischer Literatur so gar nicht entsprechen will.
Der Autor scheint gegen alle Simplifizierung der gesellschaftli¬chen Verhältnisse anzuschreiben, besonders gegen das Bild von der politischen Wirklichkeit, das die sehr einflußreiche Geheimpolizei verbreitet. Dabei ist ein aufklärerischer Anspruch unverkennbar. In einer Art Collage aus fiktiven und authentischen Elementen hat er die angemessene Form für seine vielschichtige Erzählweise ge¬funden.
All diese Eigenschaften machen das Buch lesenswert, nicht zuletzt deswegen, weil es dem Klischee von lateinamerikanischer Literatur so gar nicht entsprechen will.
September 13, 2021
uma prosa dissonante para capturar uma realidade fraturada.
October 5, 2025
Come through structureeeeee, yesssssss
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews