The Day I Killed My Father

Mario Sabino (trans. Alison Entrekin)

‘Mario Sabino handles his subject with humour and imagination.’

Epoca

‘I couldn’t put the book down. Chilling and sad, even on the same page, this book is one of the best I have read for a long time.’

Scott Noble, Readings newsletter

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'This Brazilian bestseller by Mario Sabino, is both charming and chilling ... An impressive debut from one of Brazil's most exciting novelists.'

Remix

' ... a striking first novel.'

The Age

'Intellectual, compelling and darkly humourous, the reader is driven to the conclusion with voyeuristic horror.'

The Dominion Post Weekend

‘Mario Sabino’s book, it is worth stressing, flows and is fun to read. There is nothing ‘difficult’ here – rather there is much food for thought.’

Veja

‘Mario Sabino has not sought to comfort. With courage, with malice, with humour he prefers to perturb, dismantling everything that our intelligence has conceived in the frustrated attempt to give a little order and sense to reality.’

Diogo Mainardi

'... absorbing and at times quite funny, and it left me feeling decidedly spooked.'

Richard King, Australian Literary Review

’The day I killed my father was a bright day, although the light was hazy, without shadows or contours.’

So begins the unforgettable debut of Mario Sabino: a work of suspense, tragedy, and profound reflections on the human soul that marks him as one of Brazil’s most exciting novelists.

In charming and chilling prose, Sabino draws the reader directly into the mind of a man who has committed patricide. This bold and stark book draws on complex themes of religion, philosophy, and literature in seeking to understand the nature of evil.

Part psychological thriller, part intellectual puzzle, The Day I Killed My Father plays on some of humankind’s most profound archetypes and fables, all the while lulling the reader with the brilliance of its voice.

‘Mario Sabino handles his subject with humour and imagination.’

Epoca

‘I couldn’t put the book down. Chilling and sad, even on the same page, this book is one of the best I have read for a long time.’

Scott Noble, Readings newsletter

View all reviews

'This Brazilian bestseller by Mario Sabino, is both charming and chilling ... An impressive debut from one of Brazil's most exciting novelists.'

Remix

' ... a striking first novel.'

The Age

'Intellectual, compelling and darkly humourous, the reader is driven to the conclusion with voyeuristic horror.'

The Dominion Post Weekend

‘Mario Sabino’s book, it is worth stressing, flows and is fun to read. There is nothing ‘difficult’ here – rather there is much food for thought.’

Veja

Diogo Mainardi

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 198mm × 128mm

Extent:192pp

ISBN (13):9781922247278

RRP:£8.99

Pub date:14 Aug 2014

Rights Held: UK & Commonwealth

High-res cover:Download Image

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AUTHOR

Mario Sabino

Mario Sabino was born in São Paulo in 1962. He is deputy managing editor of Veja, Brazil’s most influential weekly magazine. His second book, a collection of short stories, O Antinarciso (The Antinarcissist), won the Brazilian National Library’s Clarice Lispector Award. He has completed his second collection of short stories, A Boca da Verdade (The Mouth of Truth), and is currently working on his second novel, entitled O Vicio do Amor (Addicted to Love).

TRANSLATOR

Alison Entrekin

Australian translator Alison Entrekin has translated over forty books from the Portuguese, including the classics City of God by Paulo Lins, Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector, and My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos. In 2019, she was awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize and PEN medallion for the body of her work. Other honours include shortlistings for the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the 2012 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the 2013 PEN America Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation privately, and occasionally writes about translation (in Portuguese) at: https://www.revistapessoa.com.