Orphans of Eldorado

Orphans of Eldorado
By Milton Hatoum
Translated by John Gledson
Canongate £9.99, 164 pages
FT Bookshop price: £7.99

The myth of Eldorado has fascinated explorers for centuries. In the Brazilian writer Milton Hatoum’s fourth novel, the enchanted city finds a home in Manaus, capital of Amazonia. Inheriting his disapproving father’s shipping empire in the early years of the 20th century, Arminto Cordovil finds himself bewitched by a silent native girl from the local orphanage. As his fascination with her grows, the business that his father has built up faces destruction.

From this simple plot, Hatoum crafts a hypnotic meditation about father-son rivalry and the complex driving forces behind colonialism. Clear in each particular but tantalisingly elusive in its overall meaning, Orphans of Eldorado does what every good telling of a myth should, while John Gledson’s superb translation from the Portuguese magically conjures the strange lushness of the river country in crystalline prose.