Then comes the second miracle: a Portuguese man named Manuel Valadares, “Portuga,” who becomes the father Zezé never had. He offers not money, but the revolutionary gift of kindness.
The tragedy of Mi planta de naranja lima is not that Zezé suffers, but that he learns to love so deeply that the inevitable loss shatters the very framework of his childhood. When the real world—in the form of an accident and a train—crashes into his fantasy, Vasconcelos performs a brutal literary surgery. He cuts out the child’s innocence and leaves the adult’s memory. Vasconcelos Jose Mauro - Mi planta de naranja lima
In the vast landscape of Brazilian literature, there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that draw blood. José Mauro de Vasconcelos’s Mi planta de naranja lima is the latter. Published in 1968, it is not merely a children’s book, nor strictly an adult novel; it is a razor blade wrapped in the memory of childhood. Then comes the second miracle: a Portuguese man