Three subtly connected stories converge in this chimerical debut, showcasing a powerful new Brazilian voice Sevastopol contains three distinct narratives, each burrowing into a crucial turning point in a person’s life: a young woman gives a melancholy account of her obsession with climbing Mount Everest; a Peruvian-Brazilian vanishes into the forest after staying in a musty, semiabandoned inn in the haunted depths of the Brazilian countryside; a young playwright embarks on the production of a play about the city of Sevastopol and a Russian painter portraying Crimean War soldiers. Inspired by Tolstoy’s The Sevastopol Sketches, Emilio Fraia masterfully weaves together these stories of yearning and loss, obsession and madness, failure and the desire to persist, in a restrained manner reminiscent of the prose of Chekhov, Roberto Bolaño, and Rachel Cusk. “A truly beautiful book that is hard to describe without using words like precision, subtlety and, mostly, wisdom.” – Alejandro Zambra “Fraia captures a very specific sense of what it is like to live in São Paulo in the current political climate, but he also captures something much more universal: what it is like to live in a culture from which you feel entirely disconnected and, within that culture, to try to make art of any kind. I think that theme can speak to readers in any country.” – Deborah Treisman “Like the writers I most admire, Fraia sets for himself the hardest and most respectable task a writer can face: unraveling the mystery without revealing the secret.” —Javier Montes “Accurate language, powerful imagination.” —Sérgio Sant'Anna “A literary jewel.” —Fernanda Torres