José Falero Pedro and Marques Take Stock

A Picaresque Novel

TRANSLATED BY JULIA SANCHES

FICTION

HARDCOVER

ISBN: 9781662601231

PUB DATE: November 7, 2023

176pp

Price: $23 US/ $30 CAN

City of God meets Kevin Smith’s Clerks in this debut novel set in the favelas of Brazil where the lives of two supermarket stock clerks are upturned when their small-time marijuana business takes off.

A modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Pedro and Marques stumble through their days in the rough and rundown favelas of Porto Alegre unloading trucks, restocking shelves, and dreaming of a better life, of breaking the cycle of poverty that has afflicted their families and their community. Well-acquainted with the drug dealers in their neighborhood, and seeing an opportunity to earn a little extra cash, they decide to start a weed-dealing business.

Almost too easily, the two men build a thriving enterprise and get rich, quickly. As their sales grow from dime-bags to kilos, the wit and charm they once used to run their business turns into violence and intimidation. Cracks in their carefully crafted and seemingly untouchable world begin to show, culminating into one final, lethal showdown.

A witty, voice-driven, and electrifying portrait of poverty; a canny examination of the ethics of drug dealing and low-wage labor in the underbelly of Brazil, Pedro and Marques Take Stock is a contemporary picaresque novel of class and crime.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOSÉ FALERO lives in Porto

Alegre, Brazil. He is the author of Vila Sapo, a story collection published by Todavia in 2019, and Mas em que mundo tu vive? a collection of essays published by Todavia in 2021. The English translation of his story collection is forthcoming from Astra House. Pedro and Marques Take Stock is his first work to be translated into English.