Ashes of the Amazon
By Milton Hatoum
Translated by John Gledson
Bloomsbury £8.99, 278 pages
FT Bookshop price: £7.19

An orphan growing up in a Brazilian river town, Lavo records his difficult friendship with Mundo, an awkward but taunted misfit at school. The only child of a local tycoon, Mundo makes a delinquent heir, preferring to be a cartoonist rather than take the paths his family is keen for him to follow.

Mundo’s outlandish artistic escapades humiliate and antagonise his father, while Mundo’s supportive but alcoholic wife adds matrimonial bile to the family’s bitter misery.

Confusing relationships and responsibilities heighten the claustrophobic intensity of this heat-maddened tale. Lavo is an uncertain go-between in Hatoum’s tangled account. Mundo’s defiance smoulders with the promise of conflagration.