by Aluísio Azevedo

Brazilian writer Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo was born in São Luis do Maranhão in 1857, when Brazil was still a monarchy. An immigrant from Portugal, his mother, Emília Amália Pinto de Magalhães, was, unlike many of the people around her, literate. She was also unconventional. First she shocked the townspeople by leaving her husband, a philanderer who mistreated her. Her second husband, David Gonçalves de Azevedo, was a vice-consul of Portugal. Again she scandalized the city, this time by moving into his townhouse without marrying him. The couple had three sons, including Aluísio, who were all illegitimate until their father acknowledged them as his offspring and heirs in 1864. Moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1876, Aluísio Azevedo studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, worked as a cartoonist for political...