Maria Alice Barroso and the “Ciclo Parada de Deus”: five palimpsest novels on the ground in the northwest of Rio de Janeiro State

Abstract

This text invites the reader to delve into five novels by writer Maria Alice Barroso that belong to the “Parada de Deus” cycle: Um Nome Para Matar (1967), Quem matou Pacífico? (1978), O Globo da Morte (1981), A Saga do Cavalo Indomado (1988) and A Morte do Presidente ou A Amiga da Mamãe (1994). The five novels have as their “fictional ground” the small town of “Parada de Deus” and, although each novel is not presented as a continuation of the previous one, they relate to each other as a palimpsest, an overlapping of layers that require the work of reading in order to fully present themselves. With each socially given reading, a new layer of meanings is deposited on top of the existing ones, which is added to it as another element of its story. Each of these layers constitutes, in turn, another text, which will adopt the written form in another book of the cycle and will acquire social existence and literary specificity.